That Damned Thing (2026): This short by Christopher Lewis is exactly the kind of grim discovery that’ll keep you up. It’s a lean, mean creature-feature procedural that doesn’t bother with grand explanations, focusing instead on the cold, hard reality of an autopsy gone wrong. Set in a coroner’s inquest, what begins as a routine examination of an inexplicable death quickly spirals into a full-blown crisis. As the facts fail to align and the physical evidence starts pointing to something that defies traditional biology, the morgue feels like it becomes a haunted house. Plus, Lewis plays a smart game with the monster here. He knows the most terrifying beasts are the ones that stay just out of focus for as long as possible.

Hatchlings (2025): Directed by Jahmil Eady, Hatchlings stars a resentful, bored teenager stuck babysitting her half-brother, a kid whose obsession with turtles is bordering on the spectrum. But instead of just a quiet afternoon in the living room, Eady kicks the door open into a vivid, hallucinatory fantasy world. As the brother dives headfirst into his own imagination, he becomes a sea turtle navigating the depths, while his sister is involuntarily cast as a slow-moving tortoise. Somehow, this all forces them to confront their sibling baggage in the most unexpected way possible.

Eternal (2026): Joshua Jeffrey Miller’s Eternal isn’t looking for cheap jump scares; it’s looking for the bottom of a bottle, the end of a rope, and the haunting reality of what happens when a man decides he’s done with the land of the living. We follow a man absolutely hollowed out by grief. He’s not looking for closure. Instead, he’s looking for an exit strategy. In his desperate state, he begins to actively hunt for death, not as a tragedy, but as a bridge. It’s a way to cross over and catch one final glimpse of the loved one he’s lost. This one gets dark.

Pyre (2026): Dylan Miller’s Pyre manages to trade cheap jump scares for the slow-drip dread of a tightening noose. Set in a desolate 17th-century village where the mud is as thick as the religious hysteria, the film is a masterclass in claustrophobic intensity. The story centers on Elspeth, a widowed mother struggling to maintain a quiet existence in a community already on the brink of collapse. Her life is upended when a charismatic, traveling inquisitor arrives. He isn’t the lumbering brute one might expect. Instead, he is polished, soft-spoken and terrifyingly calculated. Under the guise of cleansing the village of unnatural influence, he zeroes in on Elspeth. The film pivots from a period drama into a psychological crucible, pun intended, when the inquisitor presents her with an ultimatum: confess to a crime she didn’t commit to spare her daughter’s life or maintain her innocence and watch the flames consume everything she loves. It is a grim, unrelenting look at how faith can be weaponized for absolute control. A dark story told well.

Ride Pending (2026): Directed by Sam Tiwanak, this has Sara (Elena Vance) making the mistake of pushing her luck on a remote mountain hike. Stranded as the sun starts to dip below the horizon, she fires up an app and summons a ride. Enter Henry. He’s prompt, he’s polite, and he’s driving a car that looks a little too clean for these dirt roads. At first, it’s just awkward small talk. Then, it’s a missed turn. Then, it’s the realization that Henry isn’t following the GPS. As the miles tick away and the interior of the car starts to feel less like a taxi and more like a prison, Sara has to play the ultimate game of cat and mouse. It’s a claustrophobic nightmare that plays out in real-time, focusing on the agonizing transition from uncomfortable passenger to fighting for your life.

The Arcade Attendants (2026): Directed by Corbin W.M. Peek, this is set in the waning days of the arcade golden age and follows a group of underpaid, perpetually bored teenagers running a massive game room. It’s all apathy, cheap pizza and trying to avoid the manager until an ancient, unlabeled cabinet arrives in the back office. Once a few high-score seekers start messing with it, the boundaries between the pixelated world and the strip mall reality start to buckle. Suddenly, the jump scares aren’t just happening in the games. They’re bleeding into the prize counter. I really loved all the supers in this and how much it brings in video game content.

Crossfaded: Thesis Film (2026): Jeffrey Rucker’s Crossfaded is for anyone who’s survived a house party. Jax is a dealer who views the world through a haze of smoke. Brian is a social drinker who just wants to be loved. When they find themselves accidentally locked in the basement, they’re forced to connect with one another. What starts as a standard stoner comedy rapidly devolves into a surrealist chamber piece. As the crossfaded state of the title sets in, the basement starts to feel less like a room and more like a purgatory. The walls seem to close in, the frat-house music upstairs turns into a throb, and these two strangers realize that in a world this superficial, they might be the only two real people left.

Mystic Stylez (2025): Lil’ K, a rapper whose career is currently flatlined at the bottom of the Memphis underground. Tired of playing to empty bars, he turns to an occult ritual to manifest fame and fortune. The payoff is instant. His beats get tighter, the crowds get bigger,and the tracks start climbing the charts. But the price of admission is soul-deep. As Lil’ K’s reality begins to fray, he realizes the sinister forces he invited in aren’t just looking for a feature on his next track. It’s a classic Faustian bargain, but with a trunk-rattling bass line and enough Southern-gothic atmosphere to fill a graveyard. Director Giovanni D. Fleming commissioned local Memphis producers to create original tracks for the film. The music isn’t just background noise. It’s practically a character in the film, with the cursed beats actually changing tempo and pitch as the protagonist’s sanity slips away.

Private I (2024): Directed by Evan Patrick Adam, this film follows a basement-dwelling bellboy (Leo Vance) who spends his nights not just hauling luggage, but cataloging the lives of guests through the lens of a high-end digital camera. He’s the ultimate invisible man, convinced he’s the smartest guy in the hotel until he catches sight of a mysterious, porcelain-faced woman (Sarah Jenkins) checking into the penthouse. His obsession with her leads him down a rabbit hole of conspiracies, hidden identities and shallow graves. But as the investigation deepens, the line between his digital archives and his own reality starts to dissolve. He realizes that the footage he’s been collecting has made him a person of interest in a game he doesn’t fully understand, forcing him to turn the camera on himself.

Knifeman (2025): Horatio Hunt is an IRS agent. He’s a man whose life is defined by audits, spreadsheets and the crushing weight of small-town corruption. He’s the definition of mild-mannered, the guy you’d never notice in a crowded room. But when a shadow organization begins tearing his city apart and the legal system proves too slow to stop them, Horatio stops crunching numbers and starts crunching skulls. Trading his calculator for a collection of high-carbon steel blades, he becomes the city’s most surgical predator. It’sFalling Down meets a slasher flick, where the protagonist is just as terrifying as the villains he’s hunting while also looking vaguely sentai.

You can watch this either in-person or virtually at the Chattanooga Film Festival. For more info, visit the official site.