You thought that with all the love we've been throwing at Austin's Fantastic Fest we'd probably forget all about good ol' L.A. Screamfest. Not with me on horror watch! The event runs from October 12 to 20, and if you happen to be located anywhere near the legendary Mann's Chinese Theater -- you just might want to duck inside to see what sort of murderous mayhem is going on.

And the Screamfest looks to be starting off on the right foot this year: Last night's opening night film was George A. Romero's Diary of the Dead! After much praise from the audiences at Toronto and Fantastic Fest, the master's latest zombie opus will hit the west coast with much excitement and gore. And the fun doesn't stop there. The festival will also offer Robert Rodriguez's director's cut of Planet Terror (which is awesome) and a 25th Anniversary screening (and cast reunion) of Friday the 13th Part 3. Yes, in 3-D!

Attendees will also get to check out the long-awaited DVDquel Return to House on Haunted Hill, a screening of the great-looking 30 Days of Night (and the video prequels Blood Trails), David Arquette's festival fave The Tripper, and a variety of genre titles of various shapes, sizes and nationalities. Of the Screamfest flicks we've seen, we've already given a strong seal of approval on the quiet but creepy Alone, the robust zest of Wrong Turn 2, the Pakistani lunacy known as Hell's Ground, , the freakishly ferocious Inside, and the apocalyptic awesomeness that is The Signal. Plus I keep hearing that Shrooms is pretty amusing, Buried Alive is gruesome, and Storm Warning is really solid.

How is it possible for a movie nowadays to wring so many unsettling jump scenes from one simple premise? With Alone, directors Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom prove that their remarkably scary freshman effort, Shutter, was no fluke. This time they push their character-based horror in a different direction, centering the story on a woman named Pim (Masha Wattanapanich). Pim was born as a conjoined twin, but her sister Ploy died after the two were successfully separated. Pim married her sweetheart Vee (Vittaya Wasukraipaisan) and moved to South Korea.

As the film begins, Pim is celebrating her birthday. One of her party guests pulls out a deck of fortune-telling cards and informs Pim of good news: something she has lost will soon return to her. Then Pim receives bad news: her mother in Thailand has suffered a stroke. Pim and Vee rush home to help out. Almost as soon as they arrive, Pim begins seeing frightening apparitions of her dead sister. Pim has always blamed herself for her sister's death because she was the one who insisted upon the separation of the twins. Pim had fallen for Vee and yearned to marry him, while Ploy wanted to remain connected to her sister forever.

Great premise, right? Instead of a long-haired girl or "I see dead people," you see one person, your long-gone sister, over and over again, evidently wanting to be reunited with you in more ways than one. We all know how family members can haunt us long after they're dead and buried, how old arguments and grudges and resentments keep surfacing, trying to claw their way into our present lives. Vee sees this happening to his beloved wife and he does what any reasonable man would do: he gets an old school pal, now a psychiatrist, to pay Pim a visit.