‘Nightmare in the Ozarks’ film fest turned Eureka Springs into a goth Mardi Gras

Typically, film festival planners start preparing for their event at least a year out from opening. If you’re starting a festival from scratch and want it to be successful, you’ll probably want even more time to plan. You’re thinking about venues, bookings, sponsors, ticket sales, merch design, marketing…it’s a lot. It’s certainly not the kind of thing that comes together in a matter of months.

Somehow, though, that’s exactly what Nightmare in the Ozarks managed to pull off on its inaugural year in Eureka Springs, Ark. The brainchild of horror fan, academic and Eureka Springs innkeeper Coltan Scrivner and producer Mariam Michael Draeger (aka Lady Mariam), the festival came together in a flash, and performed beyond anyone’s expectations.

“I would’ve been happy if we sold 25 or 50 tickets to this thing,” Scrivner said at the festival’s opening on Thursday, Oct. 24. By that point, they’d sold 500 tickets. When programming started on Friday morning, the number was over 600.

Those tickets weren’t just local folks looking to pad out their zombie weekend activities; during my time at Nightmare in the Ozarks I ran into a few other Kansas City visitors, as well as folks who’d traveled from as nearby as Springdale, Ark., and as far away as Los Angeles. 

Chalk that up to a lucky break—earlier this month, Nightmare in the Ozarks was featured alongside such established festivals as the Telluride Horror Show in a New York Times article on Halloween film festivals worth traveling for — and the festival’s planned coinciding with Eureka Springs’ highly popular Zombie Crawl.

Not bad for a film festival in its first year. 

Selections varied from arthouse folk horror (Mudbrick, The Severed Sun and Breathing In) to camp (the well-received Christmas-themed slasher comedy He Sees You When You’re Sleeping) to H.P. Lovecraft-inspired cosmic horror (The Daemon). The latter film’s co-writer and co-director, David Michael Yohe, had a special guest in tow: His mom, who’d come from Oklahoma City to see her son’s film for the first time. Guests even posed with a couple of prosthetics from the film on the red carpet just outside the doors of the Eureka Springs Auditorium, which hosted the weekend’s entire program. 

A grateful Yohe thanked the audience from the stage ahead of the screening: “Our film doesn’t happen without festivals like these,” he said. He knows of what he speaks — The Daemon has enjoyed a fairly successful run at festivals like London’s Frightfest and Provo, Utah’s Filmquest. It’s easy to see why it’s been a hit; the film, about a family cursed with a pull toward an ancient being that lives in a lake, features some fantastic practical effects and a dark sense of humor alongside its squicky Lovecraftian scares.

Nikola Petrovic’s Mudbrick, which opened Nightmare in the Ozarks, also claimed the festival’s audience award. Petrovic’s film is a clever, slow-burn take on folk horror, one in which the ancient god that stalks the land and the person responsible for unleashing its power receive equal sympathy. When a man born in Serbia and raised in England inherits his estranged father’s home, he has to contend with his brother and his family, who already live in the place. The family also lives in fear of a relentless entity called Nav, who seeks retribution for a past injustice in the form of a sacrifice. As the film unwinds, we learn why the family is so anxious to appease Nav, and what role their newly-arrived relative has to play in keeping him at bay.

Of course, the films were only part of the festivities. Another major attraction was Eureka Springs’ annual Zombie Crawl. The event itself started at 6 p.m., but that didn’t stop excited zombies (and spectators) from crowding downtown starting Saturday morning. A tent with makeup artists providing zombie facial treatments had a line stretching around the block by 2 p.m. Other side activities included a “zombie brain buffet” at 4 p.m. where participants in full zombie getup competed to see who could devour a brain (made of bright red Jell-o) the fastest. 

Vendors in the basement of the Eureka Springs auditorium featured horror-themed art, books, clothes and movies from boutique distributors like Severin Films, while a street fair outside focused on creative wares offered by Eureka Springs’ many local artists. These ran from the traditional forms of gifts and souvenirs—novelty jewelry and t-shirts, soaps, art print—to the less conventional, including self-published horror novels, crystals and psychic readings. Truly, something for everyone.

Eager attendees started jockeying for sidewalk space and restaurant balcony tables as early as noon, and as the day wore on, the vibe approached what I can only describe as “goth Mardi Gras.” On Spring Street, The Quarter restaurant at The New Orleans hotel blasted the Ghostbusters theme song and Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” from open windows. Halloween yard inflatables started appearing on apartment balconies overlooking the road. A couple of times I noticed revelers in costume and/or zombie makeup tossing beads to each other. Tops, fortunately, stayed on—this was a family-friendly event, after all, and nobody likes looking at undead cleavage.

The raucous atmosphere extended to the crawl itself. There were the zombies themselves, which included a group of undead doctors, a zombie cheerleader and a couple wheeling their own real-life “zom-baby” in a stroller. There were cars decked out, too, including a truck with LED eyes on the windshield and draped with skeletons. One was manning an honest-to-god flamethrower mounted to the roof of the car, which spurted fire as the car slowly wound its way down Spring Street’s narrow curves. No one here was doing anything by halves—even if it meant potential health and safety violations.

On Sunday morning, I dragged myself to Harold’s Diner post-festivities for breakfast. Half the staff had called in sick (or, you know, hungover) and the owner, his partner and “Momma” were piling up plates of outstanding pancakes and bacon as best they could. Even here, there were still vibes to be had. The trees dropped gobs of orange leaves, the nip in the air perfectly complemented my coffee, and a sweet neighborhood black cat—appropriately named Spooky—rolled over for belly scritches and stared down unwelcome dogs. It all added up to a weekend that made Nightmare in the Ozarks and its surrounding environs feel like its very own Halloween world, one I can’t wait to return to.