Like most nonprofit workers, you’ll find Shay Wescott wearing many hats on a given day. Her main job is overseeing fundraising efforts for the Dairy Arts Center as the multidisciplinary culture hub’s development manager. But when the lights dim in the facility’s Boedecker Theater on Friday night, the 32-year-old cinephile and Lafayette resident steps into her unofficial role as “The Queen of the Weird.”
Wescott earned that title as co-curator of the Dairy’s weekly Friday Night Weird film series, serving up a strange slate of cinematic offerings you likely won’t find on Netflix. From bonkers B-movie slashers to under-the-radar art films, the regular showcase has been keeping Boulder’s more adventurous moviegoers on the edge of their seats (or watching through their fingers) for nearly a decade.
“Everyone has just kind of migrated to streaming services. I also love being alone watching movies and not leaving my house — I totally get all that,” she says. “But this is actually curated by real people who thought and researched what we’re showing and really, really care about the experience.”
In the inaugural edition of our new monthly column, Boulder Weekly caught up with Wescott to talk about the weird and wonderful offerings in store this month.
Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World
Friday, June 7 | Saturday, June 8
Radu Jude, 2023, Romania, 2:40, NR
Listed among Boulder Weekly film critic Michael J. Casey’s top movies of 2023, the latest from Romanian director Radu Jude has been described in these pages as “a clever ding at soulless capitalism.”
Ilinca Manolache plays an overworked and underpaid gig worker in this satirical and surreal film that won the Special Jury Prize at the 2023 Locarno Film Festival. Part postmodern comedy, part obscene Instragram reel, Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World defies easy categorization — but Wescott says it’s the filmmaker’s most accessible work to date.
“I recommend this film with the zeal of the converted,” she says. “I went in skeptical, because I always want to love his films and I just come out feeling nothing. This was the exact opposite. It’s so funny and layered. There’s an ending set piece that is just breathtaking.”
The Beast
Friday, June 14 | Saturday, June 15
Bertrand Bonello, 2024, France/Canada, 2:26, NR
Wescott calls the latest from French director Bertrand Bonello “the outlier of the month” in June’s Friday Night Weird lineup.
Known for the political thriller Nocturama and the supernatural teen-angst flick Zombi Child, Bonello’s new film The Beast works on a larger scale as a sci-fi drama based on a 1903 novella by Henry James. Set in 2044, it follows a young woman named Gabrielle navigating a world where human labor has been made obsolete by artificial intelligence.
“A lot of the Friday Night Weird films are super low budget or very purposely have this kind of underground feel. This is much more classical filmmaking, but it’s playing with a lot of different genres. It is simultaneously science fiction, a period piece and a romance,” Wescott says. “It’s also deeply rooted in fears of technology. There’s a kind of an accidental throughline in the first three films this month, which are all about very modern fears: the fear of capitalism, technology and the fear of identity.”
I Saw the TV Glow
Friday, June 21 | Saturday, June 22
Jane Schoenbrun, 2024, USA, 1:40, PG-13
A horror movie about loneliness and a love letter to longing, I Saw the TV Glow is a mesmerizing work of neon-drenched nostalgia and critical gender theory. Produced by Emma Stone under her Fruit Tree banner, the sophomore effort by emerging filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun is a fresh and freaky sendup of ’90s TV pop-horror staples like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Are You Afraid of the Dark, marrying the sleepless delirium of a teenage slumber party with the dreamy swagger of an uncanny David Lynch masterpiece — and a killer soundtrack to boot.
On the heels of their knockout 2021 debut We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, the 37-year-old director describes their A24 follow-up as the second in a “screen trilogy” about gender dysphoria. Centering on two troubled young friends who become obsessed with a creepy late-night TV show, the film unspools into a time-spanning cosmic allegory that’s as sad as it is unsettling. Throw in a suite of unlikely cameos by the likes of Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst and indie-rock royalty Phoebe Bridgers, and you’re in for a film that’s not quite like anything you’ve ever seen.
“If you’re not already going to be in on this movie, I don’t know that I can convince you. It all thrives on emotional logic and resonance — it’s either a piece of your soul, or it’s not,” Wescott says. “I’m very hopeful it’ll work, because I think there’s a good chance the people who have enjoyed the Friday Night Weird films will be in this club.”
Cemetery Man
Friday, June 28 | Saturday, June 29
Michele Soavi, 1994, Italy, 1:45, NR
The dead don’t stay that way in Cemetery Man. Directed by Michele Soavi and based on the novel by Tiziano Sclavi, this 1994 comedy-horror movie from Italy follows graveyard groundskeeper Francesco Dellamorte (Rupert Everett) who falls in love while battling the cemetery’s flesh-hungry residents who rise from their not-so-eternal slumber.
With a new restoration from the American Genre Film Archive — described by Wescott as “the Criterion Collection of all things in the underground, grindhouse, exploitation and B movie realm” — Friday Night Weird fans will be in for a bloody and bellicose treat when this offering from the director of the cult-classic Stage Fight rounds out the month’s offerings.
“It’s a weird and gory zombie movie, heavy on the European flair that makes for the best arthouse horror,” Wescott says. “It’s that kind of influence mixed with American low-budget, Evil Dead-type gore and humor.”