Weekend Event Planner

These are the 10 best things to do in Dallas this weekend

Theater and music make up the majority of events across Dallas this weekend, but the biggest one is the opening of an art experience unlike anything in the area. There will also be a film festival, four new local theater productions, a trio of concerts, and a chance to win fun playhouses.

Below are the best ways to spend your precious free time this weekend. Want more options? Lucky for you, we have a much longer list of the city's best events.

Thursday, July 13

Asian Film Festival of Dallas
The 2023 Asian Film Festival of Dallas will feature 18 feature films and five short films over four days, including opening night selection The Night Owl from Tae-Jim Ahn, closing night selection Drive from Park Dong-hee, and special screenings with filmmaker Q&As like Linh Tran’s Waiting for the Light to Change and Sing J Lee’s The Accidental Getaway Driver. Screenings take place through Sunday at Angelika Film Center Dallas.

The Watering Hole Collective presents Spring Awakening
The Watering Hole Collective will present its inaugural production, the Tony Award-winning musical, Spring Awakening. Based on the groundbreaking and controversial 1891 German play by Frank Wedekind, the musical tells the story of teenagers discovering the inner and outer tumult of adolescent sexuality set to a contemporary pop-rock score. Reimagining the 2006 hit for 2023, the Watering Hole Collective invites audiences to dive into the deeper messages of sexual awakening, youthful rebellion, and self discovery. The production runs through July 22 at Arts Mission Oak Cliff.

Friday, July 14

Meow Wolf: The Real Unreal
Friday is the long-anticipated grand opening of Meow Wolf: The Real Unreal, where visitors embark on a journey through a technicolor wonderland that blends storytelling, technology, and immersive art. The experience encourages visitors to explore different dimensions of perspective and creativity through more than 30 rooms of multidimensional art. Visitors can choose to engage with a story about a family who has unknowingly unlocked portals to a different existence, or they can just enjoy the fun and weird art all on its own. Meow Wolf will be a permanent entertainment experience at Grapevine Mills.

Dallas CASA presents Parade of Playhouses
Dallas CASA's annual Parade of Playhouses features custom-designed and built children's playhouses on display and available to win by raffle. Playhouses run the gamut of style and design, from pop culture-inspired castles to modern, abstract designs and from tiny versions of North Dallas new construction to play-based climbing structures. All funds raised from the event, running at NorthPark Center through July 30, benefit the child victims of abuse or neglect served by Dallas CASA's volunteer advocates.

MainStage Irving-Las Colinas presents The Underpants
In the riotously funny farce, The Underpants, Louise and Theo Maske are a couple whose conservative existence is shattered when Louise's bloomers fall down in public. While her momentary display does not result in all-out scandal, it does attract two infatuated men, each of whom wants to rent the spare room in the Markes' home. Written by Steve Martin, the production runs through July 29 at Mainstage Irving-Las Colinas.

Samantha Fish in concert with Jesse Dayton
Singer/guitarist Samantha Fish has been playing her style of blues rock for almost 15 years, releasing her debut album, 2009's Live Bait, at the tender age of 20. She's gone on to release 10 more solo and collaborative albums, including the new Death Wish Blues with Jesse Dayton, with whom she will be co-headlining this special concert. They will play at Longhorn Ballroom, with Carolyn Wonderland as the opening act.

Theatre Coppell presents Young Frankenstein
Young Frankenstein is a musical stage adaptation of Mel Brooks’ brilliantly funny film. Frederick Frankenstein, grandson of the infamous inventor Doctor Frankenstein, reluctantly inherits the family estate in Transylvania. With the help of a hunchbacked sidekick named Igor and lab assistant Inga, Frederick finds himself following in the mad-scientist tradition of his ancestor, creating a monster for this century. When the monster escapes, hilarity abounds. The production runs through July 30 at Coppell Arts Center.

Richardson Theatre Centre presents Boeing, Boeing
A hit comedy similar in vein to Shakespeare’s comedies of merry misadventures and mistaken identities, Boeing Boeing tells the exploits of French bachelor Bernard and his lovely female flight attendants. In the past, Bernard has been able to juggle these women, but when the situation changes and all of the women end up at his apartment on the same day, Bernard struggles to keep them from learning the truth. The production runs through July 30 at Richardson Theatre Centre.

Saturday, July 15

The Polyphonic Spree 23rd Birthday Celebration
The Polyphonic Spree, which was started by lead singer Tim Delaughter in 2000, will celebrate its 23rd year in existence by releasing its latest album, Salvage Enterprise. This performance at Longhorn Ballroom will feature the live debut of new material as well as past favorites to celebrate the band’s birthday.

Ace Frehley in concert
For people of a certain age, Ace Frehley will always be Spaceman from the rock band Kiss. But he left that band in 1982, so the majority of his career has been as a solo artist, even though he's never truly been able to leave his early days behind. Almost all of his seven solo albums, including 2020's Origins Vol. 2, have involved members of Kiss or been influenced by their music. He'll play at The Echo Lounge & Music Hall.

Photo courtesy of Jesse Dayton and Samantha Fish

Samantha Fish and Jesse Dayton will play at Longhorn Ballroom on July 14.

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Movie Review

Faces of Death returns with modern twist on cult horror film

Photo courtesy of of IFC Films

Dacre Montgomery in Faces of Death.

True horror fans will likely be familiar with the 1978 cult film Faces of Death, which purported to be a documentary showing real-life killings in gory detail. It didn’t, of course, but that didn’t stop rumors from continuing to spread for decades. Now, almost 50 years and multiple sequels later, comes a new version of Faces of Death, an actual movie that pays homage to the original in interesting ways.

Margot (Barbie Ferreira) works at a YouTube-like company called Kino as a content moderator, flagging videos that violate the company’s policies. This means her job often involves seeing some truly despicable things from all manner of depraved people. One day, though, she comes across a video that seems a little too real, and after seeing more similar videos, she starts to believe they’re genuine murders.

Going against her company NDA, she starts to investigate the videos on her own, which puts her on the radar of Arthur (Dacre Montgomery), who is actually kidnapping people and killing them on camera through methods seen in the original Faces of Death film. It’s not long before Arthur tracks her down, with a plan to make her one of his next victims.

Written and directed by Daniel Goldhaber (How to Blow Up a Pipeline) and co-written by Isa Mazzei, the film is not so much scary as it is creepy, with the occasional gross-out sequence. The idea of having someone emulate the killings in the cult film is a good idea, and pairing it with the modern-day attention economy - in which content creators go to increasing lengths for clicks - is a clever twist on a concept that other films have done.

The film as a whole is a commentary on how social media and video sharing sites have often decided to prioritize profits over the well-being of their users. Margot is shown allowing videos involving violence and sexual assault to stay on the site while nixing ones depicting how to use Narcan or demonstrating putting on a condom on a banana. Josh (Jermaine Fowler), Margot’s boss, is even explicit in the company mandate that outrageous videos drive views.

While Arthur has the makings of a good villain, there are few attempts to make him seem truly diabolical. His kidnappings often seem more spur-of-the-moment than calculated, and even though he has a well thought-out dungeon at home, the house’s location in the suburbs seems to make him vulnerable to easy discovery. Goldhaber and Mazzei leave more than a few unanswered questions along the way that take away from the intensity of the story.

Ferreira is yet another actor from Euphoria who’s capitalizing on her exposure from that show. She plays Margot’s increasing anxiety well, and when the action ratchets up in the final act, she meets the moment in a satisfying way. Montgomery returns to the vibe he had while playing the evil Billy on Stranger Things, and even though his character doesn’t fully live up to his potential, Montgomery sells his evil for all it’s worth.

The new Faces of Death may not be what some are expecting given the reputation of the previous films, but it’s a solid horror/thriller that uses the brand as a launching pad into something different. It doesn’t make much of a dent in the scare department, but it does give its violence and gore a degree of relevance in today’s often desensitized world.

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Faces of Death is now playing in theaters.

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