Category Archives: Movie reviews

Chattanooga Film Festival 2026: W.T.F. FUNSIZE EPICS VOL. 3

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Blossom Needs a Ride Home (2025):Directed by Tim Schwagel. You know how it is. You spend your night fighting off a bloodthirsty maniac, you’re covered in gore, the adrenaline is fading, and now you have the ultimate indignity: trying to get a ride home in the middle of nowhere. I always wonder what happens in a slasher after it’s all over. This short has taught me that getting the ride you need may be even more difficult.

The Stay (2026): An illustrator, already frayed at the edges and pushing against a wall of creative stagnation, retreats to a remote, stark location to finish a massive project. As the deadline approaches, the boundaries between the illustrator’s dark, ink-heavy creations and his reality begin to bleed together. This gave me a lot of feelings, as I am against deadlines every day.

Max Distance (2025): This follows a weary programmer who spends her waking hours lost in the digital void of endless, droning Zoom meetings. To keep her sanity, she starts living vicariously through the window of her apartment, obsessing over the mysterious, handsome stranger living next door. It starts as a harmless flirtation with the idea of a real life, but as her professional isolation deepens, her daydreams begin to bleed into a full-blown fixation. As someone in these meetings all day, I understand.

Feast (2025): The world has ended and whatever is left is starving. In this wasteland, the survivors have adopted rituals that are as sadistic as they are necessary. Our protagonist is a man who finally hits his breaking point, refusing to participate in the group’s barbaric feasts. But in a society where conformity is the only currency, dissent is a death sentence. He finds himself caught in the crosshairs of a ruthless, manipulative leader who understands that if you control the calories, you control the morality. This won’t end well.

Always On (2026): Bronson Somatz is a man at the end of his rope. Fresh off a brutal breakup with an Instagram model, he retreats to the subterranean safety of his parents’ basement. Yet he doesn’t find clarity—he finds a bizarre new routine. To process the wreckage, he sets up shop in the back of an old, abandoned ice cream truck, holding therapy sessions for whoever wanders by. As he mixes booze with the isolation, the lines between his reality and his increasingly twisted, devolving daydreams start to blur. But maybe he’s better off. Maybe he doesn’t need a son named Batman and to watch other men rail his wife. Maybe he can succeed on his own with that reverse ice cream sandwich. Kyle Kuchta has made a short that I wish were a show streaming all the time. This was absolutely amazing.

The Lord of All Future Space and Time (2025): A grief-stricken cowboy whose life was shattered when his wife was brutally taken from him is ready to ride into the sunset and let the buzzards take him until he stumbles upon a mysterious duffel bag dropped straight from the future. Inside? Advanced tech that turns him from a man with nothing to lose into a one-man army with the power to rewrite the past. But it’s more than that. It’s all the lives that are touched or not touched by each decision. Director Chris Paul Russell has made something absolutely incredible here, and this is my favorite short I’ve seen at this fest. Just so well made and something that packs so much into its 24 minutes.

Fisher of Men (2025): Director Zach DeSutter tells a fish story. Or, well, made a short film that centers on a fisherman who is, to put it mildly, complicated. He’s a man of grit and tradition, but he’s carrying enough baggage to sink a skiff. When his questionable past catches up with him, he finds himself being hunted by something that has been lurking in the depths of his home lake for decades. The monster is an ancient, grotesque entity that seems to know exactly which buttons to push to make our protagonist pay for his earlier sins.

Imago (2025): Director Ariel Zengotita takes the concept of toxic family dynamics and drags it into the realm of body horror, creating a film that is as repulsive as it is impossible to turn away from. Ana has always lived in the shadow of her mother, but that shadow is about to get a lot more literal and a lot more chitinous. As her mother begins a slow, agonizing, and grotesque transformation into an insect, their already frayed, codependent relationship begins to unravel completely. It’s not just a physical transformation; it’s an emotional one. As the mother loses her humanity, Ana is forced to care for a parent who is becoming something entirely alien. She’s also going to make her feel guilty of dating a gringo, which is a whole other story.

RED: Beast Huntress (2025): Directed by Benjamin Maublanc, this follows Red, a fierce mercenary, who is hired to rescue a young shepherdess kidnapped by a mysterious beast on the eve of her wedding. As Red ventures deep into the forest to track the creature, she finds that man is the worst monster of all. This looks amazing and as a lover of sword and sorcery, I’d love to see a full-length.

And They Shall Handle Serpents (2025): If you thought getting the wrong order from your local delivery spot was bad, director Stuart Valberg is here to make your local driver look like a saint. The film introduces us to a takeout driver who has traded his GPS for a holy mandate. Convinced by the audio casettes he listens to that he’s been chosen to lead the wayward back to the Father, he decides that the best way to save souls is to make some terrifying—and usually lethal—adjustments to the local delivery orders. What a dark and well-made movie.

triptrap (2026): Jade (Ayla Xuan Chi Sullivan) isn’t great with people. But her sister invited her to a party and tells her she still ahs to go, even alone, but then everyone starts tripping and there’s a ghost and…well, we’ve all been there. Directed by Jack Dorfman, this made me think that the ghost might hav ea frightening face, but was probably the best person Jade had met at this place.

WAR (2026): Directed by Danny Shepherd, this takes our protagonist to an underground combat ring, a place where her sister has goen away to, leaving her family behind. What does she find in this violent sport of the future? Will she still have space for her sister after the carnage is over? And what exactly kind of battle is this? Great twist.

Penelope (2026): Penelope has been dead for a while—666 days, to be exact—and she’s spent most of that time catching up on some serious shut-eye. When she finally wakes up, she realizes she’s blown her deadline to raise an army of the undead to make her father Satan proud. With the clock ticking and the Lord of Lies himself on the way, she has to pivot fast. She starts scouring the neighborhood, recruiting the most unlikely soldiers imaginable: an irate MAGA neighbor who probably has a bone to pick, two total stoners who have no idea they’re being drafted for a zombie apocalypse, and a mopey boy from next door that Penelope is nursing a major crush on. When dad shows up and takes one look at this ragtag group of misfits, the comedy turns into a stinging look at the universal struggle of never quite being enough for the people who raised you.

The One-Minute Problem (2026): When you’re tinkering with the fabric of reality in a suburban garage, the last thing you need is a visit from the utility company. Director Nick Delgado has made a great short about Raul, a Spanish immigrant with a brilliant but dangerous mind. He’s on the verge of perfecting a teleportation device. The problem? It requires more juice than the local electrical grid can comfortably provide. Every time he fires it up, he triggers blackouts across the neighborhood. Enter a relentless, pencil-pushing Department of Water and Power inspector who isn’t just looking to write a fine. He’s looking to end the operation permanently. As the inspector closes in, Raul’s experimental high-voltage drain starts acting up, threatening the structural integrity of his invention, his lab partner, his quiet domestic life, and the safety of his pregnant wife. This feels like it needed a full-length to fit all the ideas.

My Favorite Murderer (2025): Gayle (Mitzi Akaha) is a true crime junkie who spends more time listening to forensic podcasts than she does dating. But she finally meets the right guy, he seems almost too good to be true. He’s handsome, charming, has an encyclopedic knowledge of unsolved mysteries and throws her a party where he dresses as Keith Morrison. But as the sparks fly, the line between a shared hobby and a shared pathology begins to blur. Is it true love or is it a mutual descent into darkness? Tina Carbone has created a fun short and yes, I am married to a true crime person who falls asleep listening to how luminol makes the blood glow.

Yolk (2025): Our protagonist, played with frantic, bleary-eyed intensity, is just trying to make it home after an all-night warehouse party. But a wrong turn down a labyrinthine industrial alleyway leads her straight into a pocket dimension inhabited by creatures that defy biological logic. These aren’t your standard movie monsters; they are slimy, shifting and deeply unsettling. As she struggles to survive this alien domain, she undergoes a transformation that is as much about the loss of self as it is about physical metamorphosis. Ingo Dieckmann has captured something frightening and yet gorgeous.

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

Chattanooga Film Festival 2026 Red Eye #6: The Day of the Dolphin (1973)

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High-concept sci-fi. 70s paranoia. Talking dolphins. The Day of the Dolphin is a strange, earnest and a little bit flawed trip. Directed by Mike Nichols—fresh off The Graduate and Carnal Knowledge—this is a somber, weirdly tense thriller that takes its talking dolphins premise with a level of seriousness that borders on the bizarre.

Dr. Jake Terrell (George C. Scott) and his wife, Maggie (Trish Van Devere), are living the remote-island dream, spending their days at a secret facility teaching dolphins to speak English. They hit the jackpot with Alpha (“Fa“), a dolphin they’ve raised since birth, who finally manages to pipe out, “Pa love Fa.“

Everything is going swimmingly until the shady Franklin Foundation, led by the slippery Harold DeMilo (Fritz Weaver), decides that these intelligent marine mammals have a better use: acting as mobile, weaponized delivery systems for a presidential assassination.

After the dolphins are staked, a web of government conspiracies and undercover operatives (including a pre-Mob boss, Paul Sorvino) emerges. When the dolphins are trained to deliver a magnetic limpet mine to the President’s yacht, it’s up to the bond between the scientist and his aquatic subjects to turn the tide. It’s essentially a political thriller where the main stars spend half the runtime clicking at each other.

This movie was originally going to be directed by Roman Polanski. Following the tragic murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, at the hands of the Manson Family, he dropped the project. Mike Nichols called this the hardest shoot of his career. Filmed in the Bahamas, the production was plagued by delays, largely due to George C. Scott, who famously delayed the start of filming by claiming he had a virus for three days. Producer Joseph Levine later griped that he paid Scott $750,000, only to have the star go over budget and off schedule.

While it’s based on a novel by Robert Merle, the film — written by Buck Henry — leans heavily on the real-life work of Dr. John C. Lilly, a neuroscientist who spent the 60s actually trying to teach dolphins to communicate. His work was fascinating, controversial and definitely pushed the boundaries of science. Probably logic, while he was at it.

The Day of the Dolphin is definitely a relic of a time when major studios were willing to roll the dice on incredibly weird ideas. It’s slow, it’s melancholic, and it’s genuinely convinced that you care deeply about these dolphins’ emotional growth. 

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

JUNESPLOITATION: Neverlake (2013)

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DAY 27: Italian Cinema!

Jenny (Daisy Keeping), a young English woman, heads to Italy to reconnect with her estranged father, Dr. Brooks (David Brandon, Stagefright, Beyond Darkness). Once a respected medical professional, Brooks has traded in his stethoscope for a trowel, acting as an amateur archaeologist obsessed with a lake—an actual place, The Lake of Idols—once worshipped by the Etruscans.

As Jenny digs into her father’s project, she starts unearthing dark secrets about the lake, her own past, and the man she barely knows, sparking curiosity and a desire to uncover the truth. 

Back to the lake. Locals used to toss carved totems into the water as sacrifices to the spirits, but Brooks has been busy doing the opposite. He’s exhuming these ancient relics and throwing other stones into the water for reasons that aren’t exactly clear at the start.

With her dad constantly out researching, Jenny is left to her own devices. She’s caught between a dimly evil au pair named Olga (Joy Tanner, Prom Night IV) and spending afternoons reading Shelley by the lake. This habit quickly attracts an audience of pale, disfigured children from a nearby orphanage who emerge from the woods. Jenny, acting like some sort of goth-crazed den mother, starts bonding with them. Mistake, right? You know it.

This was director Riccardo Paoletti‘s first movie. He’s working on a no-budget, all-over-the-place script from Manuela Cacciamani and Carlo Longo, but he does his best with it. It’s nice to see that an Italian horror movie was made this century. I wish we could have seen what our favorites would have made for streaming channels.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Chattanooga Film Festival 2026: W.T.F. FUNSIZE EPICS VOL. 1

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Spanked by a Ghost (2025): Directed by Katelyn Douglass, this follows a lonely protagonist who finds herself living in a house that isn’t just haunted. It’s handsy. But she doesn’t run for the hills. Instead, she becomes obsessed. So what starts off as a standard ghost story becomes an exploration of repressed, supernatural desire. As the entity becomes more aggressive, the film shifts from jump-scare horror to something much stranger. Now, it’s a messy, eroticized fever dream that asks, “What happens when you fall in love with the thing that’s tormenting you?” If The Entity turned you on, good news. Watch this. I mean, the title itself is a spoiler.

Book U Can Ask ???s (2026): Directed by Casimir Nozkowski, this is the story of Mikey (Maura Madden), who is just trying to enjoy getting high. The peace is shattered when they find a ghost in the kitchen—a spectral figure with “bloody teeth”—casually all the KEA dinnerware. Turns out, the spirit is a Victorian-era casualty looking to settle a 150-year-old grudge against the descendants of his murderer. The only snag? A corporation bought the building in the ’80s, and the original bloodline is long gone. Mikey, showing a level of empathy (and lethargy) rarely seen in supernatural cinema, decides to help. Using nothing but an internet search and a bit of modern “know-how,” they turn the search for vengeance into a quest for closure. It’s a weirdly wholesome, occasionally hilarious look at what happens when the past clashes with the digital present. Loved this.

The Border at Tolstoi (2025): Directed by Bob Kotyk, this has a border guard working the night shift at the Tolstoi crossing. It’s a thankless job in the middle of nowhere. Then a mysterious traveler arrives, carrying a device that looks more like a prop from a 1970s Canadian sci-fi serial than any real-world weaponry. When the guard tries to inspect it, the device malfunctions—or perhaps it works exactly as intended—and blasts her with an energy pulse that effectively unmoors her consciousness. From there, the film becomes a disorienting, surreal experience. It’s essentially a body snatcher movie where the only victim is the protagonist herself, struggling to maintain her sanity while her own biology starts to glitch in increasingly gruesome ways.

Breeder (2026): Directed by Sapphire Sandalo, Breeder is a sharp, jagged piece about the weight of expectations and the literal manifestations of internal fears, all centered on a mythological entity that is as terrifying as it is bizarre. The film follows a woman who is currently on the fence about motherhood. It’s a classic, grounded setup. That is what it was, until the folklore starts bleeding into reality. She finds herself stalked within the supposed safety of her own home by a demonic horseman, an entity pulled straight from the dark corners of Filipino myth. Sandalo masterfully keeps the action tight, focusing on the claustrophobia of the home. When the creature finally makes its appearance, it’s not some CGI blur, but a hulking, visceral presence that feels like it’s actually occupying the space with her.

Flame Out (2025): Directed by Emily Grace Goldwyn, Flame Out is a sharp, acidic comedy of manners that feels less like a traditional film and more like a collective panic attack. If you’ve ever had a night spiral out of control because you simply couldn’t say no, this one’s going to hit a little too close to home. I mean, I feel seen. Anyway, Grace is the kind of serial people-pleaser who would apologize to a door that she bumped into. In an attempt to be everything to everyone, she manages to catastrophically double-book her entire evening. The result? A series of misunderstandings that lead to her accidentally buying out an entire Diptyque candle party—spending an absurd amount of money on overpriced wax—while simultaneously nuking a long-term friendship. I’d like this to be full-length, but it would give me so much trauma.

Hairy Times Of Harry Webster (2026): Directed by Murda Hill, Hairy Times of Harry Webster is a bizarre, hilarious and surprisingly poignant addition to the mockumentary subgenre. It tracks the meteoric rise, the crushing fall and the inevitable “where are they now?” comeback of Harry Webster. Oh yeah, he’s the most famous spider puppet in Hollywood history. Yes, you read that right. We start in the golden age of puppetry, where Harry Webster was the toast of the town. He was a velvet-coated, multi-limbed icon who starred in high-concept creature features that redefined 1950s cinema. The film covers the scandal, the substance abuse (mostly involving high-grade spider silk and vintage hairspray) and the eventual disappearance into total obscurity. Weird and perfect.

Xolo (2025): Directed by Matthew Serrano, Xolo is simple, intimate and gut-wrenching. Skippy, a small Xoloitzcuintli, wakes up in the middle of the night, driven by hunger. His search for snacks quickly turns into a desperate quest to find his owner, Maria. He discovers her lying motionless on the couch, clearly passed on. Before he can process the tragedy, the front door swings open to reveal Xolotl—the Aztec god of death—arriving to claim her soul. What follows is an unconventional standoff. Instead of attacking, Skippy uses his canine intuition to sense the god’s purpose. The dog embarks on a tour of the home, leading the god through the house and showing him the small, mundane and loving moments that defined Maria’s life. It’s a surreal, meditative look at death, where the monster is actually a divine bureaucrat and the hero is a tiny, devoted dog trying to prove that a life is worth more than just its end. Thanks, Matthew, you made the movie that made me cry the most at Chattanooga Film Festival. I was a mess at the end of this.

Total Party Kill (2026): Directed by Alan Sanchez, Total Party Kill is the kind of high-concept, table-top-inspired mayhem that demands to be watched with a rowdy crowd. A tight-knit, all-female squad of tabletop veterans is deep into a weekend-long campaign. The trouble begins when they unbox a new set of miniatures, including one suspiciously intricate piece that seems to have a personality of its own. As they roll for initiative, it becomes clear that a demonic presence has hitched a ride from the abyss into their living room. As the characters in their game sustain in-game injuries, the players begin to feel the physical toll, turning their comfortable apartment into a deadly trap. It’s a creative way to leverage the game’s logic to heighten the terror, making every dice roll feel like a sentence. I loved this!

Kaiju Kid (2024): Directed by Rusteen Honardoost, Kaiju Kid is an eight-minute explosion of pure, unadulterated passion for the genre. If you’ve ever been the kid who spent more time stomping around your bedroom pretending to be a giant monster than doing your homework, this short film is going to hit you right in the nostalgia. It sure did for me. The setup is as classic as smashing Tokyo. A young boy, completely obsessed with giant monster culture, takes playtime a little too far by trashing his sister’s dollhouse. It’s a relatable bit of sibling friction that quickly spirals out of control. When the sister decides to exact her revenge, the boy retreats to the safety of his closet, where his imagination takes over. What follows is a brilliant hybrid of live-action and stop-motion. The kid’s dreamscape transforms him into his favorite monster, leading to an all-out rampage of miniature proportions. This is a ton of fun.

Legend of Sun Knight (2025): Directed by the duo of Samuel Billings and Landon Nuzum Clark, Legend of Sun Knight is the tale of a wandering knight. When he makes it to the Moon Lord’s domain, he finds shadow, oppression and a kingdom of peasants who have seemingly lost their collective will to fight. What follows is an underdog uprising. The knight quickly realizes that he can’t take down the Moon Lord alone, so he begins the slow, arduous process of rallying the oppressed villagers. Really fun animation!

Monster Medicine (2025): Director Veronica Felicity Johnson delivers a high-energy, darkly humorous take on supernatural medicine with Monster Medicine. This eleven-minute short feels like the pilot. Imagine ER set in East L.A., but instead of heart attacks and accident victims, the triage unit deals with zombies and vampires. The story drops us straight into the chaos of a busy emergency room where Dr. Hunter (Brittany Belt) is barely keeping her head above water. Things go from standard emergency to nightmare shift when a patient named Luna (Andi Norris) arrives exhibiting symptoms of a violent werewolf transformation. While Dr. Hunter tries to balance her medical oath with the insanity unfolding before her, her cynical, seen-it-all colleague, Dr. Clay (Eric Toms), is ready to wash his hands of the whole mess. The situation escalates until the hospital’s top-secret Monster Medicine unit is paged. In come the specialists: a vampire doctor and a zombie physician who treat supernatural ailments with the kind of casual professionalism usually reserved for stitching up a papercut. I want more of this!

M.R.I. (or, Michael Returns Indefinitely) (2025): Directed by John F. Beach, M.R.I. (or Michael Returns Indefinitely), is a cold, clinical and deeply paranoid descent into the kind of healthcare bureaucracy that makes you want to cancel your insurance. Michael has finally reached his breaking point with the labyrinthine inefficiencies of the modern medical industry. After his latest appointment, he does the unthinkable: he openly questions his doctor’s motives. It’s a moment of human defiance that should be unremarkable, but in this film, it’s a death sentence. Michael soon realizes he hasn’t just offended a physician. He’s gone up against the people who run the world. As someone who works in the field, this was almost too real.

Seppuku in the Park (2026): Directed by Nikko Wisner, this has a protagonist who has spent a decade as the face of a ubiquitous insurance mascot. He’s a household name, but he’s also a professional ghost. Nobody knows his real face, and nobody cares. Driven by a volatile mix of ego and existential dread, he decides that to become a real actor, he needs to destroy his public persona. He retreats to an isolated, wind-swept park to essentially purge himself of his mascot identity, but his aspirations manifest as hallucinations. The title isn’t just a metaphor; it’s a mission statement.

Unstrung (2025): Directed by Jerold Wallace, this follows a meticulous, solitary toy maker who prides herself on the ability to breathe life into broken relics. When a high-paying client drops off a battered, antique puppet for an urgent restoration, the toy maker rushes to get it done. However, it all ends up with human puppets, a ton of gore and some really go for it cinematography. Really wild!

Silverbacks (2026): I loved this as much as I hate soccer, which is a lot. Amazingly directed, great actors and some hilarious dialogue. I want an entire series. Directed by Dave Willis—a name that should be familiar to anyone who has spent their late nights glued to Adult Swim—Silverbacks is a sharp, hilarious thirty-minute look at the indignities of middle age. If you’ve ever reached for a bottle of ibuprofen after a weekend hobby, this one is going to feel like a documentary. I mean, I sure have. The premise is deceptively simple: a group of men decides that the best way to reclaim their youth is to form a soccer team. It’s not about winning trophies or glory; it’s about the primal, desperate struggle to navigate the pitch without throwing a hip out or pulling a hamstring. Look for Henry Zebrowski, Steve Coulter, Cooper Andrews and Rory Scovel as members of the crew.

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

Chattanooga Film Festival 2026 Red Eye #8: Hollywood Mortuary (1998) and Demon Queen (1987)

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Hollywood Mortuary (2000): Pierce Jackson Dawn (Randal Malone) was one of the greatest make-up artists of the early 20th century. However, his death is quite strange. It came after he wanted to work with horror stars Pratt Borokov (Tim Sullivan) and Janos Blasko (director and writer Ron Ford) for producer Leonard Schein (Wes Deitrick), even though Blasko had overdosed and Borokov had to be convinced through death and reanimation to make the movie. Yet instead of acting, they begin killing.

Featuring interview segments with David DeCoteau, Conrad Brooks, silent star Anita Page and former Hollywood starlet Margaret O’Brien, this is basically Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff coming back from the dead to destroy unsuspecting people. For that alone, as well as how it’s shot, kind of like a documentary, you have to enjoy it. It’s a low, low, low budget affair, yet when has that stopped a movie from being worthwhile?

If you love old movies and didn’t have any worries about watching movies, no matter what format they were shot in, you’re going to love this. If you demand things have an actual budget and not spend time throwing deep cut horror jokes at you, well…

You can watch this on YouTube.

Demon Queen (1987): Donald Farmer has 40 directing credits, including Cannibal Hookers, Red Lips, Shark Exorcist and Chainsaw Cheerleaders. This is an early SOV title from him, with a video store clerk who tries to get people to rent horror movies and a female demon—well, a vampire, but let’s make the title work—who moves in with a drug-dealing couple.

It’s also 46 minutes or so with 6 minutes of credit and sound that you can barely hear. So, you know, pretty great. It also has drone synth compositions of a single long note, massive amounts of video effects that probably felt dated by 1987, and tons of actually pretty decent gore.

If this had better quality and was shot on film, I probably wouldn’t care as much. There’s just something about the beyond-faded quality of Shot On Video that gives these movies a heart that they may not have had otherwise.

Chattanooga Film Festival 2026: CFF SALUTES YOUR SHORTS: FUNSIZE EPICS VOL. 2

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The Second Coming (2025): A young couple is trying to navigate the normal stressors of life. They are looking to cement their future, but that future gets derailed when a divine entity descends. This isn’t your standard angel-on-the-shoulder visit. This entity is cold, intrusive, and treats the couple’slife like a lab experiment. As the entity begins to systematically sabotage their bond, the film shifts from a relationship drama into something far more hallucinogenic. It’s not just about losing your partner; it’s about losing your sanity to a power that doesn’t care about human concepts like love or fidelity. Director Micha Straub has an interesting subject here and turns in a great short.

Nebuchadnezzar (2025): Directed by Samuel Ogunremi, this short follows a stage manager by the name of Ruth (Joyce Chen)—the eyes and ears of the studio—who starts noticing that the glitz of The Silly Show is a flimsy veil for something much more sinister. After an on-air outburst that goes viral for all the wrong reasons, she starts peeling back the layers of the production. She finds that Dane (Jack Powers), the charismatic, eccentric host, isn’t just selling snake oil. His goals are much higher, and he already has an entire army ready to follow him. What a strange and disturbing movie!

Hazelbeth (2025): Directed by Graham Hastings, this short is all about an obsessive conductor preparing for the concert of a lifetime. This is the kind of opportunity that either defines a career or ends with a breakdown. Enter the titular Hazelbeth, a mysterious, antique baton that promises to elevate his craft to a divine level. Of course, this is a movie about a cursed object, so you know exactly where this is going. As he practices, the music starts to warp, his sanity begins to fray and the baton starts acting like a parasite. Nice Bava lighting and sound design near the end, too!

Selfless (2025): Directed by Will Anderson, this puts Damien through the wringer. After battling to regain control of his mental health, he’s finally feeling like himself again or at least, like a version of himself he can live with. His sights are set on one goal: reconnecting with Liana, his girlfriend of three years. They’ve had their bumps, including a two-month break that left a void in their lives, but Damien is convinced that this is his chance for a fresh start. Fate, however, has other plans. Just as he’s about to make his move, he’s stopped cold. It’s not a medical relapse or a simple misunderstanding; it’s something entirely, unsettlingly not human that stands between him and his future. Anderson turns the simple act of trying to fix a relationship into a desperate fight for survival, where Damien has to prove that he’s capable of holding onto the things he loves.

Tick (2026): Directed by Sam Permar, Tick is a nasty little piece of body horror. It’s the kind of film that takes a scenic, high-end location like Martha’s Vineyard and systematically dismantles its peaceful facade, leaving you with nothing but paranoia and pus. A couple heads to a vacation spot with one primary goal: to conceive a child. It’s supposed to be a romantic reset, a quiet retreat from the stresses of their day-to-day lives. But the island has other plans. What begins as a seemingly benign tick bite quickly spirals into a full-blown medical catastrophe. As strange, aggressive rashes begin to bloom across their bodies, the film shifts gears from a domestic drama to a visceral, skin-crawling horror show. Man, I’m itchy. 

Goldie (2026): Directed by Elise Frances Garner, Goldie is set in a dusty, fading 1930s traveling circus. Goldie was once the star attraction, but she has been pushed to the fringes by younger talent. The film doesn’t waste time with sentimentality. It’s a brutal character study of a woman who refuses to be erased. As the circus struggles to stay in business, Goldie realizes that the only way to remain relevant is to escalate. What begins as petty sabotage against her younger rivals quickly spirals into something much darker.

Caged (2026): Directed by Ben Caplan, Caged is a nasty, stripped-down short that wastes no time getting to the throat. The story follows a single mother who, on a routine night after a grueling shift, is plucked from the streets and abducted. She wakes up to a nightmare: she’s locked in a literal cage, held captive by a shadowy antagonist in a remote, inescapable location. The hook, however, is the only card she has to play. The captor’s young daughter is the only other soul in the house. The film transforms into a tense, agonizing psychological game as our lead realizes that her only hope for survival is to manipulate, befriend and ultimately gain the trust of the very child who lives in the shadow of her abductor. It’s a desperate, uncomfortable dynamic that forces the protagonist to push her moral boundaries to the breaking point. There’s also a twist, as there should be.

The Painter (2025): Casey Miller is dealing with the sudden, untimely death of her mother. While clearing out her estate, she inherits a singular, haunting painting. As Casey tries to grieve, she becomes increasingly distressed by what she’s seeing. The painting is shifting, and a figure that wasn’t there before appears. As Casey becomes obsessed with documenting the changes, a sinister presence begins to manifest in her real life, tethered to the canvas. Director Birdie Gilreath should make this into a full-length film.

Raccoon Soup (2025): In 1973, Lori, a young waitress, battles crazy customers, a feral raccoon and Ricky (Marx Mitchell), her sexist boss. But she has a goal. She’s trying to earn enough money to land a sponsorship for the state knife-throwing competition. It’s a classic underdog with a blade narrative, but director Janey Gentry injects it with manic energy. I love that the raccoon is a puppet, I love Megan Wilcox as the lead, and I am absolutely obsessed with the place they shot this, which feels like a Rax with that old-school sunroom. Even trying to have a cigarette with the cook, Jimmy (Daniel Beltram), turns out to be a revelation about lizard aliens.

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

Chattanooga Film Festival 2026: The Chattanooga Syndrome – NOCLIP 3 (2026)

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For the last two Chattanooga Film Festivals, Gavin Charles and Alex Conn have shown a liminal horror film, those being NOCLIP and NOCLIP 2: Return to Lunchland. Now, they turn the lens on themselves. Picking up right where their last project left off, the third movie follows the filmmaking duo as they head to Tennessee to celebrate the premiere of their previous feature. But the celebratory mood quickly sours—or rather, shifts into something far more unsettling—when they receive a tip about the hidden, architectural anomalies lurking in the forgotten corners of Chattanooga.

What starts as a standard filmmakers on the road documenatryevolves into a surreal hunt for liminality. As Gavin and Alex traverse the city, they aren’t just looking for B-roll; they are chasing the aesthetic of transition and find it in empty hotel corridors, abandoned transit hubs and retail spaces that feel stuck in a temporal loop. The film leans heavily into the found-footage ethos, but by making themselves the primary subjects, Charles and Conn create a claustrophobic feedback loop where the viewer starts to question if the tip they received was a genuine lead or a trap designed by the city’s own architecture to keep them documenting its emptiness forever.

There’s always a hum in the air, always another dead mall to explore. No matter where this movie takes them, I see another one in the future. Thanks guys, for teaching me what liminal horror was a few years before Hollywood took it over. You are helping an old horror fan stay current.

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

Chattanooga Film Festival 2026: Narcisa’s Will (2025)

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Directed by the team of Daniel Dias and Clarissa Appelt, this dives deep into the suffocating legacy of fame and the kind of family trauma that doesn’t just haunt a house. It possesses it.

The premise is simple but emotionally rough. Ana (Paolla Oliveira), struggling to process the death of her mother—a legendary Brazilian screen icon named Narcisa (Rosamaria Murtinho)—wants to wash her hands of the past. She plans to sell their crumbling, memorabilia-filled childhood home and split the proceeds with her younger brother, Diego (Pedro Henrique Müller).

The problem is that Narcisa didn’t build a legendary career by following anyone’s rules. She certainly isn’t going to start now that she’s dead. When the spirit of the matriarch begins manifesting in her old dressing room, the film shifts from a domestic drama into a claustrophobic power struggle. Narcisa’s will is so potent that it bleeds into the present, forcing Ana and Diego to confront the reality that they are merely supporting characters in their mother’s eternal, ego-driven lead role of a life. And death

The dressing room is the true star all on its own. It’s cluttered with the detritus of a lifetime of fame—faded headshots, vintage makeup kits and costumes made for a funeral—all of which serve as anchors for the haunting.

Usually, I make fun of movies where people go back home to fix things and end up being haunted by their past life. This is so well-made that I have nothing negative to say.

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

Chattanooga Film Festival 2026: Misper (2025)

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There is something about a dying seaside hotel that serves as the perfect petri dish for madness. In Harry Sherriff’s 2025 psychological chiller, that atmosphere of decay isn’t just a backdrop. It’s the primary antagonist.

When Elle (Emily Carey), an employee of a crumbling, off-season seaside hotel, vanishes, you might expect the usual procedural beats. You’d be wrong. The sheriff isn’t interested in the police tape or the frantic pleas of family members. Instead, he trains his camera on the hotel’s remaining staff, specifically Leonard (Samuel Blenkin). As the mystery of Elle’s disappearance lingers, this shifts into a claustrophobic study of grief, guilt and the slow, corrosive power of dread. The hotel is a rotting carcass, and as the investigation stalls, the staff begins to unravel.

The film relies heavily on its character-driven tension and the cast manages to capture that specific, hollow exhaustion of service workers stuck in a place that has long since stopped being profitable. Without leaning into grandstanding, the actors lean into the mundane terror of the situation. It’s a quiet, stifling performance style that makes the inevitable psychological breaks feel earned rather than forced.

Plus, it’s done in 71 minutes.

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

Chattanooga Film Festival 2026: DANGEROUS VISIONS: FUNSIZE EPICS VOL. 1

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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.