Amira (2025): Directed by Javier Yañez, Amira is set in a music conservatory where daylight seems forgotten. Amira is a violin student struggling to survive in a place of perpetual shadow. The pressure is immense: students are competing for a coveted spot to perform for the school’s mysterious Governor and the public, a performance that promises a ticket out of this dark institution. But the school is hiding a gruesome secret. Something prowls the halls at night, and those who earn the honor of playing on the big stage have a nasty habit of vanishing into thin air. I’m excited to see what’s coming next, as IMDb says, “A feature version of the story is currently being written.” What is it with European music schools and how they seem to love killing their students?

Haunted Basement (2026): A young boy discovers that his basement isn’t just home to old holiday decorations and dust. Something truly nasty is living down there. Naturally, when he tells his parents, his fears are dismissed. The grownups are blind to the terror, so he’s forced to treat his own house like a war zone. It’s a straightforward, high-stakes setup that plays heavily on the universal fear of what happens when the basement light flickers out. Directed by A.J. Serrano and Hailey Choi, this is pretty fun.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Red Ribbons in the House of Stained Glass (2025): Our protagonist is a young reporter who is hungry, desperate and clearly in over her head. She gets a lead that could blow the lid off a massive scandal involving a deviant Archbishop and a labyrinthine web of sex crimes. The problem? The source is as slippery as a greased eel. As she digs deeper, the movie shifts from an investigative procedural into a claustrophobic nightmare, where every shadow in the cathedral looks like a threat and you start wondering if she’s actually hunting a story or if she’s just being led into a slaughterhouse. Seeing how the title should tell you this is a giallo, prepare for blood. Shout out, Jeff Speed, I loved this. Great gore, an awesome mask and a solid understand of giallo while being told in a short film length. Just awesome.

As Pale As Death (2025):Ryan Kukec’sAs Pale As Death is a neon-soaked, sunscreen-slathered slice of 90s-era nostalgia that hits like Zima spiked with LSD. It’s a ridiculous, high-concept blast that manages to blend the sunny disposition of a family vacation movie with the ancient, dusty dread of a classic Universal monster flick. It’s 1997 and the Miller family is living their best life in Fort Lauderdale. But when their 10-year-old son—desperate for a pre-teen glow—sneaks into a local tanning salon, he accidentally awakens a slumbering ancient mummy. What a wild ride, and like so many of the best shorts, I’d watch a whole movie made out of this.

B Side (2026): Max finds Dan at the edge, which is a literal and figurative precipice where Dan is ready to let go. But instead of an intervention, Max offers the final push. It’s not an act of murder, but an act of facilitation. From there, the film spirals into a night-long descent through the city’s underbelly. It’s a game of cat-and-mouse, with roles constantly shifting, exploring the toxic dynamic of being witnessed. It’s less about the act of dying and more about the suffocating pressure of being truly seen by someone who wants nothing more than to see you fall. An interesting film from Caleigh Le Grand.

Heirlooms (2025): Dan Abramovici’sHeirlooms is a taut, claustrophobic short that reminds us that sometimes, when you dig into the past to heal old wounds, you’re more likely to unearth a curse that should have stayed buried. Jaime is looking for a path to healing, and she thinks she’s found it in the restoration of a dusty, ominous family heirloom. It’s meant to be a therapeutic, meditative process and a way to reconnect with her lineage. Instead, the project acts as a lightning rod. The heirloom isn’t just an object; it’s a vessel. As she scrubs away the grime of decades, she wakes up something ancient and hungry that has been waiting patiently in the marrow of her bloodline, ready to exact a price that has been compounding for generations.

The Prowler (2026): Christopher Pinero’s The Prowler is a paranoid, claustrophobic descent into madness. It’s all about Victo, who is being hunted. Maybe. Maybe not. That’s what he insists is happening. At the very least, he’s increasingly convinced that an unseen presence is stalking his every move. As the tension ramps up, his perception of reality starts to splinter. Is he being targeted by an external threat, or is he finally unraveling under the weight of his own secrets? The film keeps you locked in his headspace, and by the time the truth finally bubbles to the surface, you’ll discover where the monster really is.

Gimme (2025): Steven Schloss’s Gimme is a tight, nasty little holiday nightmare that proves you don’t need a massive budget to make a game of spinning a top feel like a descent into the inferno. The setup is deliciously simple. It’s the first night of Hanukkah, and the air is thick with the kind of family tension that could cut glass. A grandfather and his estranged granddaughter are forced to confront their history, but things take a hard left turn when they are coerced into a sinister, high-stakes game of dreidel. This isn’t your childhood play for some gelt. Here, the stakes are beyond life and death.  They’re playing for their souls, and the rules of this particular game are written in something far darker than ink. What a great idea for a short!

Man of the House (2025): The story follows a mother who is pushed to the absolute edge by the routine of raising her young son. But the film pivots from a drama about parental burnout to a nightmare when she begins to notice that, once the sun goes down, her son is replaced by something ancient, predatory and entirely inhuman. Alex Henes’ Man of the House is a brutal, sleep-deprived descent into domestic terror.

Shift (2025): Lucca Vieira’s Shift is a nasty, neon-soaked slab of body horror. The story follows a deeply insecure teenage girl, desperate to conform to the impossible standards of her peers and social media. To meet thos elofty beauty goals, she turns to a black-market cosmetic drug. It starts with the promise of perfection. Did you see The Substance? Things devolve quickly. The drug is a genetic wrecking ball and as her body begins to shift and warp, the film turns into a suffocating nightmare. It’s a cautionary tale, sure, but one that’s been put through a meat grinder.

STAY IN (2026): Victor is a man defined by his boundaries. He’s a total recluse who lives by a set of rules that revolve entirely around one central tenet: stay inside after midnight. The city outside is presented as an abstract, hostile entity—”It’s not safe out there™”—but the walls of his apartment aren’t as protective as he thinks. When a long-dormant secret from his past starts leaking through the floorboards, he realizes that the thing he’s been hiding from isn’t an intruder. It’s a memory that has become lethal. Well done, short by Michael Buran.

The Deep Vessel (2026): A struggling folk band is hitting that classic sophomore slump. Money is running out, the inspiration is nonexistent, and the clock is ticking on their next album. Enter Reggie (Tyler Beveridge), the band’s manager, who decides that instead of practicing, they should just take a shortcut to stardom. He introduces the band to the Deep Vessel. It’s an ancient box that apparently served as the secret weapon for several legendary metal bands. The skeptical crew, made up of Daisy (Aisha Kumari), Marcus (Ed Ackerman) and Johnny (Murphy Martin), eventually gives in to the pressure and summons Brage (the voice of Keith Szarabajka), the god of poetry, music and eloquence, who plays a harp. Sean Cruser has put together something really fun here, and that could easily become a full movie.

Sleep Call (2026): In this short, Rich Huynh explores the eerie, melancholic stillness of the digital age. The story follows a lonely, isolated protagonist who finds a lifeline in a sleep call. I had no idea what that was, but I guess kids today leave their audio lines open while they drift off. What starts as a simple, comforting connection with a mysterious stranger quickly shifts gears. As digital intimacy deepens, the line between reality and the spectral projection of the voice on the other end blurs. Well, at least that’s better than all the people who want to get off to his voice. The voice of Lily, whom he finally finds, is Yumprincess (or simply Yum), who started as an NSFW voice actress primarily on Reddit under the name Listen_to_my_voice. In 2022, she rebranded to Yumprincess and started posting ASMR content on YouTube. I get this, though. Loneliness, even with all the ways we can connect, still exists. I really loved this as it kept me guessing and wondering where things were going next. What an odd, perfect movie that totally disturbed me.

TLSM (2026): Directed by Filip Momirovski, this excursion into the dark corners of North Macedonian folklore is exactly the kind of weird I enjoy. The premise is as universal as a playground bruise. A kid, pushed to the absolute brink, is gearing up for a final, desperate confrontation with his bullies. It’s the kind of setup that usually leads to a standard underdog tale, but Momirovski isn’t interested in standard. Instead of a montage of push-ups or a training sequence, the kid finds himself entangled with a spirit ripped straight from Macedonian folktales. This turns a simple schoolyard scrap into something far more ancient, messy and potentially dangerous.

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