D.C.-area film festivals tend to center on specific causes or identities. There’s an environmental film festival, a Jewish film festival, a labor film festival, and probably a pro-worker Jewish environmentalist film festival. But one of the best-kept secrets of this city is that there’s an international film festival that’s devoted to a genre, not an issue: horror. Based at the AFI Silver, the Spooky Movie is a terrific mix of what’s new in horror, from amateur films and slickly produced Hollywood spectacles to movies so gnarly and hardcore that mainstream audiences could never handle them. The best horror movies provide emotional extremes, whether it’s relief, despair, or something in between, and the festival programmers know their audience craves variety. No matter if you’re a suspense addict or gore geek, the Spooky Movie is diverse enough to guarantee that you’ll get the shit scared out of you. Oct. 9-Oct. 18 at AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $12 for single tickets, $125 for all-fest pass.