Carnival of Souls

Presented by Lazy Girls Film Club

Mary Henry ends up the sole survivor of a fatal car accident through mysterious circumstances.

Trying to put the incident behind her, she moves to Utah and takes a job as a church organist.

But her fresh start is interrupted by visions of a fiendish man. As the visions begin to occur more frequently, Mary finds herself drawn to the deserted carnival on the outskirts of town.

Lazy Girls Film Club Programmer Eleanor says...

The legacy of Carnival of Souls can be seen across film history. It is there in the dreamlike worlds of David Lynch, in experimental works like The Headless Woman (Lucrecia Martel, 2008), and in more commercial features like the recent Smile (Parker Finn, 2022), which itself owes much to It Follows (David Robert Mitchell, 2014). German filmmaker Christian Petzold even directed an unofficial remake, Yella (2007). In many ways, it is a record of attitudes towards mentally ill women, a prescient slow-burn horror that wears its surrealism lightly, lingering in the consciousness of modern filmmakers and audiences.

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