Unexpectedly, it seems these will be playing at various venues near me. Has anyone seen or heard buzz about any of them just yet?

I've seen BORDERLAND and that is a good representation of the murderous cult discovered in Mexico in the late 80s. Of all the films, MULBERRY STREET has gotten the best buzz of the bunch. I'll definitely be checking that out. Here is a review (spoilers are in it):

http://www.fangoria.com/ghastly_review.php?id=4163

Thanks! I'll try to at least get to those two, MULBERRY STREET for sure.

Just in case anyone's interested here's the official site:

8 Films to Die For - After Dark Horrorfest

The have synopsis and trailers for all the movies as well as other info, like theater listings. It is unfortunately Flash driven.

Other than the sound effects getting me in trouble at work, why is it unfortunate that it's flash driven, Terry?

I ain't Terry, but on a Mac, I find Flash buggy unless really well-implemented.

Primarily:

1) it's not accessible friendly (screen reader won't work with it, etc...)
2) you can't link directly to anything; all you can do is link to the Flash page
3) it's bloaty and I enjoy nothing more than sitting and watching a load meter slowly creep toward 100%
4) what Jeffrey said, it can be buggy (somewhat platform dependent)

That isn't to say there aren't good flash sites, but for the most part Flash only sites could be redesigned with plain html/css and if you want to get flashy (heh) there's javascript,ajax, etc...

So it's more of an Apple issue than a PC one?

Different Flash virtual machines for different platforms.

Mulberry Street is fairly impressive work from what I suspect is Mini DV. The sound is a little muddy and it takes its time getting to the siege aspect, but it delivers with the creeping dread.

Sort of hard overcoming the folks with rat face silliness, but I suppose they needed some sort of gimmick to separate itself from being looked at as another 28 Days Later knockoff. But the suspense is handled well, and the attack scenes deliver the goods... and it gets a little extra props for taking its name (I assume) from the Dr. Seuss book.

Also, it handles the working class neighborhood grittiness really well, with some nice character work thrown in for good measure.

Still trying to figure out if the ending worked for me... couple of nice touches that still get pretty close to crossing the heavy-handedness line. But all in all, good work.