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.

CHÄIR (2025): Directed by Chris McInroy, just from the title, you know that you’re in the world of IKEA. Carl is an exhausted, everyday guy just looking for a little bit of comfort. He finds it—or thinks he does—in a seemingly innocent high-end chair that appears out of nowhere. However, this isn’t your standard piece of ergonomic office furniture. The moment Carl plants himself, the chair stakes its claim, locking him into a visceral, inescapable embrace. What follows is a battle for survival as the furniture begins to assert dominance in the most violent ways possible. Sometimes, the whole world is against you. Even the chairs.

Beware C*ckblocking Ghosts (2026): Our protagonist is a teen just trying to navigate the social minefield of getting a date for homecoming. She finally lands one, but there’s a massive, ectoplasmic fly in the ointment. Her best friend, who happens to be deceased, has taken up permanent residence in her home. The problem? The ghost is absolutely obsessed with keeping the romance from ever getting off the ground. What begins as supernatural pranks, like flickering lights and slamming doors, quickly escalates into a full-blown, murderously jealous vendetta. Director Alys Murray has really come up with a fun idea here that could be a full-length movie all on its own.

Forever Home (2026): Ashley Wong, you made me cry like a baby. Benson, the three-legged mastiff, spends his days content to watch the world pass by until one day a mysterious dog shows up at his doorstep, followed by many more. Watching those dogs hang out made me so happy, but then they all crossed the rainbow bridge, one by one, leaving behind urns. I have similar ones in my movie room down here. I miss every animal I’ve ever had the privilege to love, and every day, I try to forget how sad it makes me that I don’t have them around. So yes, this is a beautiful, well-made animated film, but also one that I’m getting wet eyes even thinking about.

Wolf Puppy (2026): Directed by Sam Osborn, this short’s protagonist desperately wants to be the biggest dog in the yard. He’s a lonely soul, projecting a tough guy persona to the world while hiding a fragile interior. But the universe has a funny way of stripping the paint off your car, you know? As he starts experiencing hallucinatory visions, he has to learn to navigate the gap between the monster he pretends to be and the man he actually could be.

Red Light Green Light (2025): Directed by Corey Grispo, this asks us to follow a mysterious figure consumed by a singular, obsessive compulsion as he repeatedly slams his fingers down on one red and one green button. The camera doesn’t offer us the comfort of context; it just focuses on the tactile, rhythmic violence of the button pushing being done in rapid, chaotic succession. Soon, we learn why people swear in traffic.

Big Footprints (2025): Jonathan Maxwell Shander’s Big Footprints follows a dedicated squatcher who is dead set on proving the existence of the legendary beast. When the woods start getting a little too big for one man to navigate, he’s forced to recruit the last person on earth he wants to be stuck in the wilderness with: his half-brother. What follows is a comedic, character-driven trek through the undergrowth where the hunt for the elusive cryptid takes a backseat to years of family baggage. Shander uses the mockumentary style to great effect. By leaning into the behind-the-scenes nature of the hunt, he allows for those awkward, improvised-feeling moments that really sell the humor. The film doesn’t try to be The Blair Witch Project. It’s more interested in the comedy of errors that happens when two guys who don’t like each other try to track a legend.

Tasty Bones (2026): We’re deep in the woods at a late-night campfire, the kind of setting that immediately signals you’re in trouble. Our protagonist has clearly had one too many and stumbles away from the safety of the firelight to relieve himself at the edge of the tree line. In a moment of drunken boredom, he starts whistling. It’s a mindless act, a way to fill the silence. Then, from the impenetrable black of the woods, a sound ripples back: a whistle, identical to his own, but with a cadence that is just… off. Director Ronald Short wastes no time turning this simple, unsettling interaction into a nightmare.

Packages (2026): Directed by Nick Barat, this short asks us to imagine a city where the service economy has reached its absolute, logical conclusion. Here, anything and everything you desire can be dropped at your doorstep in an instant. Isn’t that already happening? No matter. Our protagonist, a man just trying to navigate this delivery-obsessed urban sprawl, finds out the hard way that when you order anything, you’re bound to get something you didn’t ask for. Director and writer Nick Barat frames this as  Franz Kafka for the Amazon Prime generation, where the packages aren’t just material goods. They’re manifestations of the protagonist’s own fractured reality. Barat comes from a creative background spanning two decades as a DJ, producer, and the editorial mind behind The FADER magazine. 

Taco Night (2026): If you think you’ve seen every variation on existential dread, John Roche III is here to remind you that the most profound life crises often happen over the most mundane meals. The premise is deceptively simple. A man sits down for a taco night, and the sheer weight of his own existence decides to crash the party. As he stares into the abyss of his dinner, his mind begins to unravel, and he starts to ponder the great beyond. Maybe he should have gotten a burrito instead.

Midnight City (2026): Bill Watterson, the director of Dave Made a Maze, is back and he’s decided to pull us deep into the grimy, smoke-choked streets of Midnight City. If you’ve been craving a detective flick that feels like it got its pages mixed up with the Elder Gods, this is for you. Dutch Lazarus (Yuri Lowenthal, who wrote the script) isn’t your typical sleuth. He’s the guy you call when the case involves something that doesn’t quite fit into the local precinct’s ledger. He a specialist in the kind of cases that usually end with a body and a pile of unanswerable questions. But the status quo takes a nose-dive when Sadie (Tara Platt) walks into his office. She’s as cryptic as she is compelling. She doesn’t just hire him; she plays him, stymieing his usual investigative rhythm at every turn. I want an entire movie of this supernatural noir.

Open Mic (2025): A bomb set is said to be the worst thing that can happen to a stand-up comedian. But Jano Pita’s Open Mic takes that professional death sentence and pushes it into the red, turning a standard stage-fright nightmare into body horror. Our lead is a stand-up comedienne who has bet everything on a make-or-break set at a local open mic. The room is dead, the air is thick with indifference, and the audience is actively hostile. As the heckles start and her jokes don’t land, she hits a psychological breaking point. But instead of just walking off stage, her biology decides to take over. Her body begins a horrific, involuntary transformation, contorting and tearing itself apart in a way that turns her failed set into the most gruesome, visceral performance art the audience has ever seen. Fulci would love one of these punchlines.

My Left Hand is a Part of Me (2026): Directed by Natasha Halevi, this film invites viewers into a tense story where the heroine’s hand seems to develop a mind of its own. What starts as a minor spasm quickly escalates into a gripping struggle for control, creating a sense of suspense that keeps the audience on edge. As the limb asserts its own agency, the psychological spiral deepens, leaving viewers eager to see how it unfolds. Good thing she has a cutting board.

The Candle (2026): You know that old saying, “Have your cake and eat it too”? Director Ren Ariel Sano takes that to its violent, logical conclusion. When a seemingly innocent birthday celebration goes sideways, the titular candle becomes the catalyst for a night of absolute mayhem. Soon, the sweet treat decides to turn the tables and start consuming the guests. Can candles be cursed? This movie claims that it is decidedly so.

Wall Udder (2025): In a near-future suburbia, the ultimate status symbol is having a functional, living udder surgically installed onto your living room wall. It’s the ultimate conversation starter, a display of wealth that separates the elite from the commoners. But as the film progresses, the absurdity of the premise gives way to a darker, more obsessive question that the characters—and by extension, the audience—have to grapple with: is this just decor or an object of desire? The film spirals from a satire of lifestyle trends into a strange, intimate meditation on obsession, culminating in the ultimate, uncomfortable question: would you actually fuck it? Director Alexandra Hayden, thank you for putting this riddle into my head.

Pimple (2025): In Borbulha, directed by Fernando Alle, we follow a young boy with a pimple. It starts simple, but soon it all quickly spirals into a biological nightmare. When the inevitable happens and the pimple bursts, it doesn’t just release a bit of pus. It triggers a chain reaction of body horror that decimates the bullies who abused him. And from then on, the blood flows. Also: A pus monster with a gun. This speech at the end brings it all together: “They mocked you for your pimples, but don’t be sad. The excess of pimples in adolescents is due to high production of testosterone. They think they are better than you, but when you grow up, you will have virility and energy to please women in bed — or men, I don’t judge — while the ones who mock you today will become adults with thinning hair and limp dicks. So remember this: when you grow up, you will be happy.”

The Mrs. Wolf Show (2026): A friendly, overly wholesome housewife hosts her own daily program, complete with a beaming audience and a pristine set. Things go sideways the moment an unsuspecting salesman wanders onto the stage, thinking he’s there for a standard pitch. What follows is a brutal game of cat and mouse where the friendly hostess holds all the cards. As the cameras keep rolling, the show morphs from a harmless daytime broadcast into something far more sinister, forcing the salesman to realize that the most dangerous predators are often the ones wearing a cardigan and a permanent, frozen smile. Director Drew Highlands really does a great job of mixing modern horror and 50s variety and sitcom feel.

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

Season’s Greetings (1996): Before Michael Dougherty became the modern architect of the holiday horror anthology with Trick ‘r Treat, he gave us the short film that started it all: Season’s Greetings. This isn’t just a student film; it is the genesis of Sam, the pint-sized, pumpkin-headed embodiment of Halloween itself. Set on a dark, wind-swept Halloween night, the narrative centers on a young boy navigating the trauma of a stolen candy haul. While the premise sounds like standard suburban mischief, the execution turns a simple holiday memory into a gothic fairy tale. As the shadows lengthen, the film shifts from the mundane to the macabre, introducing us to a mysterious, costumed figure lurking in the periphery, watching the events unfold with a silent, menacing intent. It captures that specific, anxious feeling of being alone on a street corner while the world feels like it’s shifting into something darker. Designed as a ragged, burlap-clad trick-or-treater, Sam operates as a supernatural arbiter of justice for those who don’t respect the sanctity of Halloween traditions. It all starts here (and here’s hoping there’s that sequel they keep promising).

Headphones (2026): In this short by Steven Arriagada, the hero is a kid with a crush. He’s grinding out the late night hours at a fast-food joint and the only thing keeping him going is his crush on his co-worker. In the midst of this lonely night, he breaks the routine by listening to his uncle’s old Walkman. He expects some forgotten mix-tapes, but instead, he gets instructions. A cryptic, raspy voice cuts through the static, whispering specific commands he needs to follow if he wants to keep his co-worker alive. As the night drags on, the line between helpful guidance and malevolent manipulation blurs, turning a mundane shift into a high-stakes game of survival. Headphones rely heavily on their leads to sell the escalating paranoia. The chemistry between our hero and his would-be lover is the anchor here. The high-concept premise wouldn’t have the emotional stakes required to make the audience actually care if they survive the night.

Knitting Club (2025): Clube de tricot, directed by Diogo Abrantes and João Rito, turns the cozy hobby of crochet into a blood-soaked nightmare that makes your grandma’s living room feel like a death trap. Miguel is just a delivery guy trying to finish his shift. The last stop? A quaint knitting club run by three elderly women who seem like the sweetest old ladies you’d ever want to meet. When they hand him a bag of yarn, he’s ready to head home, but they are way too insistent. They practically bully him into sitting down for tea. It doesn’t take long for Miguel to realize that being serious about their craft is an understatement. These ladies aren’t just making sweaters; they are looking for specific materials, and poor Miguel has just discovered that he’s the missing piece for their latest masterpiece. The actresses who are the grannies are great, as are just about every choice the filmmakers made. A simple story well told.

Redneck (2026): Directed by Alexandria Basso, this was amazing. For a young woman born into an isolated, insular Appalachian clan, survival is predicated on a grim, supernatural belief. They claim that redheads are vessels for stolen souls, and they aren’t afraid to harvest them to maintain their own existence. Our heroine finds herself at a crossroads, torn between the monstrous birthright of her kin and her humanity. As the clan’s demands escalate and blood starts to flow, she has to decide whether she’ll be the next predator in the lineage or the one who breaks the cycle. The actors playing the clan members avoid the typical inbred hillbilly basics. Instead, they have a cult-like devotion that is far more chilling. If South Park taught us that redheads are evil (and I married two, so I know), this sets it in stone.

Nearsighted (2026): Ryan Eatherton has dropped a nasty little piece of work, and it’s the kind of premise that makes you want to keep your lights on and your prescription lenses glued to your face. If you’ve ever fumbled on your nightstand in the middle of the night, blind as a bat and praying you don’t stub a toe or worse, you already know the primal fear at the heart of this one. Nearsighted strips away the senses, turning a home-invasion thriller into a claustrophobic nightmare of soft-focus shapes and jagged shadows. It’s simple, it’s brutal, and it plays on that specific, vulnerable feeling of being defenseless in your own sanctuary when your primary way of interacting with the world—your sight—is no longer there.

Little Deaths (2025): Directed by Derek Bensonhaver, this is an experimental anthology of horror comprising 15-second short horror films all about death. What haunts you? Getting killed by tentacles emerging from a pregnant woman’s lady parts? Falling from a plane? A scary monster? You won’t have time to recover as this beats you over the head — in a good way — with death, sweet death, one last caress. Great, now I’m going to be even more worried, especially about people dying behind the wheel.

Scissors (2026): If there is one rule in slasher cinema that a killer should follow, it’s this: never underestimate your target. Directed by Hannah Alline, Scissors takes the weekend getaway plot and slices it to ribbons, turning the tables on a killer who thinks he’s got the home-field advantage. It’s mean, it’s fast and it’s exactly the kind of palate cleanser we need in a world of over-polished horror. A group of queer friends heads out for a weekend getaway, looking for nothing more than drinks and some downtime. Enter our slasher: a guy with a major grudge and a sharpened blade who thinks he’s about to turn their vacation into a personal highlight reel. But this guy makes a fatal miscalculation. Instead of cowering, this group decides that they aren’t going to be passive victims. What starts as a standard stalking scenario quickly escalates into a brutal, claustrophobic game of survival where the hunter finds himself completely outmaneuvered. The tagline says it best: “We can go all night.” And they do. Great title, too. Better cast and wonderful use of “Sweet Dreams.”

Siren (2025): Directed by Andrew Todd, this follows a detective hunting a serial killer in the future of 2225. The trail leads him to a signal emitting from a ghost ship that has been floating in the void for a century. When he boards the vessel, he isn’t looking for a fugitive. He’s walking into a tomb. What he finds inside isn’t just the remnants of the past, but a haunting, visceral reflection of humanity’s capacity for cruelty. It turns out the ship wasn’t abandoned because of a mechanical failure. It was a cage, and the thing that built it is still very much hungry. This story is told entirely in POV mode, which adds to the sense of worry.

Long Distance (2026): A seven-minute head-scratcher directed by the duo of Max Kane and Mike Overton, this does more with its short time than so many longer films achieve. You think you have relationship problems? I feel bad for you son, but this dude in this movie is in a relationship that isn’t being strained by geography or a bad signal. It’s being torn apart by time itself. As we used to post on Facebook relationship statuses, it’s complicated. 

Sleep Tight (2025): Sleep paralysis has been a staple of horror for decades and has been haunting me since watching the documentary The Nightmare. Director Grace Presse brings something fresh to the subgenre by narrowing the scope. This isn’t about ghosts or demons in the broad sense. Instead, it’s about the intimacy of a home invasion where the intruder is right there next to you when you’re defenseless. This is a nightmare of helplessness.

Evelyn’s Here (2026): Directors Sean Temple and Sarah Wisner have cooked up a dream-logic nightmare that captures that specific, suffocating feeling of being trapped in a memory you can’t escape. This a story about the fragility of family bonds and the terrifying thinness of the veil between reality and the subconscious. Alice goes on a mission to check on her sister, but instead of a routine welfare visit, she finds herself spiraling into a haunting, labyrinthine dreamscape. It’s a classic setup—the rescue mission gone wrong—but Temple and Wisner twist it into a surreal journey where the rules of space and time don’t apply. You aren’t just watching Alice; you’re trapped in her headspace, feeling every bit of the dread as she realizes she’s well past the point of no return. This is such a great watch.

NANOcell (2026): Director Gavin Hignight (Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance, John Carpenter’s videos for “Utopian Facade” and “Night”) tells the story of Maggie Miller, who is desperate to treat her sickle cell anemia. She signs up for a clandestine clinical trial for something called NANOcell. What starts as a medical hope quickly turns into a living, mechanical hell. Maggie’s girlfriend, Claire, realizes something is deeply wrong when she catches Maggie sleepwalking and behaving in ways that are… well, not human. Before they can even process the horror, the government agency suits show up, and they aren’t there to offer medical assistance. They’re there to scrub the evidence, meaning Maggie has to turn her own deteriorating body into a weapon to survive both the tech inside her and the goons at her door. The cast features Ray Wise, an icon if there ever was one!

The Bound Prince (2026): Directors Christian Gridelli and Hunter Norris have delivered a short that perfectly captures that specific dread of being a traveling performer, trapped in a temporary space where the walls feel like they’re closing in. Our lead is a road-weary comedian—the kind who has spent too many nights on the circuit and is starting to see the cracks in reality. The inciting incident is pure, simple brilliance: she’s just trying to get some sleep in her hotel room, but her eyes keep drifting to the Gideon Bible tucked away in the nightstand. She starts connecting dots that shouldn’t be connected, spiraling into a deep, dark hole of paranoia as she becomes convinced that the holy book is actually a manual for a demonic cult’s grand design. Is she losing her mind from the exhaustion of the road, or is the architecture of her room actually rigged against her soul? This movie looks absolutely insane and I loved every quick cut moment.

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

Carousel (2025): Directed by Christopher Kosakowski, Carousel takes the classic cursed object story and gives it a grim, carnival-noir coat of paint. It’s the kind of lean, mean and twisted storytelling that hits all the right buttons for those of us who prefer our horror served with a side of greasepaint and existential dread.

The story follows a lonely circus clown whose world is defined by the melancholy of the big top. His life takes a sharp, nightmare turn when he is gifted an antique zoetrope, that early animation device that relies on the persistence of vision to create a loop of movement.

It doesn’t take long for him to realize this isn’t just a nostalgic toy. The images whirling inside the device begin to bleed into his reality. What starts as a way to brighten up his solitary birthday plans rapidly descends into a chaotic, hallucinatory loop of terror. As the clown becomes trapped by the device’s dark influence, the boundary between the performance and the predator dissolves, turning his dressing room into a claustrophobic stage for his own undoing.

Kosakowski demonstrates a clear grasp of atmosphere over excessive exposition. He understands that a clown in a dimly lit, cramped space is inherently unsettling; he doesn’t need to overplay his hand. And it doesn’t hurt that the poster for this is a reference to Romero’s The Amusement Park.

Sleeping Princess (2025): The protagonist is a professional princess who has reached the absolute end of her rope. Stuck in a high-stakes, high-stress gig, she’s tasked with keeping up the illusion of a magical, regal persona for a group of demanding children and even more demanding parents. As the party drags on, the veil of her character begins to fray. The glitter starts to look like grit; the fake tiara feels like a shackle. She even says, “I just do this for the opportunity to kick a kid in the chest.”

Director Callie Bacon does a masterful job of turning a suburban living room into a claustrophobic prison. As our lead struggles to keep the Sleeping Princess persona intact, the film leans into a place where the mundane reality of cheap cake and screaming kids starts to warp into something far more jagged and uncomfortable. It is a brilliant, ugly look at the labor behind the fantasy, including a manual that forces our heroine to refer to Cinderella as “After-Midnight Princess.” And I have to say, the line “Plug it up, princess!” made me laugh and pleased me because it references Carrie.

This does a great job of taking the futility of a day job and transforming it into a cathartic experience.

Bootstrapped (2026): Time travel movies usually need almost two hours to untangle their own paradoxes, but director Joe Heath ignores the rulebook entirely. Bootstrapped is a high-concept, low-budget exercise in narrative compression that squeezes a full-blown sci-fi headache into 60 seconds of frantic celluloid.

The narrative is a closed loop of absolute chaos. We follow a desperate protagonist who discovers that the only way to prevent a catastrophic event is to set it in motion. It’s a classic bootstrapper’s paradox. He travels back to stop himself, only to realize that his intervention is the exact catalyst that triggers the original disaster.

A cute, fun film that doesn’t overstay its running time. Well, because it’s only a minute.

Cotton Candy Randy (2026): This short follows two friends who discover a UFO in the woods and bring their findings back to their town, leading to an odyssey of stop-motion wonder. The project was a significant undertaking for The Skeleton Key Workshop, reportedly taking 15 months to produce using DIY materials such as foam, hot glue and repurposed packaging. A fun look and an interesting take on aliens!

Blackout (2025): Directed by Logan Nipper Synopsis YOU GOT YOURSELF IN. YOU CAN GET YOURSELF OUT. After a night of drinking, a college student finds a dead body in the trunk of his car and is determined to discover the truth.

Finn F. Finch & the Clock Contraption: The Lunar Lovers (2026): Directed by Toby Darling Synopsis Flustered Finn F. Finch may have met his match at the Lunar Cafe. Will we see what Finn will finagle out of this time? Or will Finn finally find true love?

Veil of the Vanishing (2026): The film opens with a woman awake in her own home, but it’s no longer hers. It’s a distorted, shifting labyrinth where rooms don’t lead where they should, and the architecture seems to breathe in rhythm with her own rising panic. She’s haunted by two things: the memory of her abusive husband and the desperate need to reclaim her rosary, which was stolen from her as a final act of control. As she navigates this void, she is pursued by a presence that moves through the house like a glitch in the walls’ reality. It’s a brutal, poetic metaphor for the trauma that refuses to release its grip, with the house itself serving as a manifestation of a life interrupted by abuse and spiritual isolation. Director Mason James Ulery isn’t interested in the usual slash-and-burn tactics of modern genre cinema. Instead, the film uses long, static takes and disorienting sound design to create a sense of dismal unease. I loved that the rosary wasn’t just a prop, but the only lifeline to the real world and escape. Beautiful, black-and-white, strobing and floating fear in seven minutes.

The Judgement (2026): Directed by Harry Corney, this is an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s 1912 short story, “Das Urteil” (The Judgment). It looks absolutely gorgeous, but if you’re not prepared for Kafka, you may be shocked by how systematically his father dismantles Georg Bendemann’s sense of reality and independence. This shot is so beautifully shot and just looks above and beyond so much of what I’ve seen lately. I’d love to see this as part of an anthology of Kafka, but perhaps a short like this is perfect and of itself.

The Gilded Mirror (2026): Directed by Jack Dudley Gewant, this centers on Charles Randolph, a formerly famous performer struggling with the lingering trauma of his wife’s death. The narrative takes a dark, psychological turn when a young woman arrives to audition for him, drawing Randolph into an unsettling world where the lines between illusion, obsession and reality begin to dissolve. The true joy of this movie is that it totally looks and feels like it was made a hundred years ago or more. Just an incredibly immaculate effort.

Closing Shift (2026): A trauma-at-work slasher that balances the mundane exhaustion of closing a theater with the sudden onset of survival-horror. KC is a burnt-out employee nearing her breaking point and Reggie is the manager, serving as the weary anchor of the nightly routine. Then, an argument in the theater leads to murder, making them wonder if they really will be stuck working at the theater until they die…which could be soon. Director M-Alain Bertoni has created a really nice short here that could totally be a full film.

Cast & Brew (2026): Directed by Priscilla Zanni, this sharp, satirical short film mines the high-pressure environment of film production for comedic chaos. When the global coffee supply runs out, everyone loses their minds. Trust me — if there was no caffeine when production happened, people would end up killing each other. By placing the narrative on a film set, Zanni highlights the often-insular nature of show business, where the minutiae of production (the scene, the lighting, the schedule) can be completely derailed by the personal demands of the star. Trust me — I have plenty of stories of the wrong coffee being served and people having cups thrown at them. If anything, this may not go far enough!

Don’t Leave Me (2026): Directed by Jennifer Saura, this is the story of Dr. Elena Vance (Clara Rossi), a brilliant anthropologist whose life’s work is the comparative study of funerary rites and the space between life and death. Her professional detachment shatters when her husband takes his own life. Instead of processing her grief, Elena descends into a mania. She begins using the occult rituals she has spent her career to bring her husband back. What starts as a desperate act of preservation quickly warps into a grotesque attempt at resurrection. As the line between academic inquiry and necromancy blurs, the house becomes a tomb, and the rituals demand a toll that Elena is all too willing to pay. While the resurrection is pure fiction, the production team drew on actual anthropological texts on death rites in remote regions of the Andes and Southeast Asia to build the scientific basis for Elena’s madness. It gives the ritual sequences a grounded, unsettling weight that makes them much harder to watch.

The Recluse (2026): Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Sirens and a radio report indicate a containment breach at the National Laboratory. The authorities slap a hard, mandatory curfew on the area, and for “the man” (played by Brian Childer), that’s a death sentence for his solitude. He’s a man who likes his own company, but when a group of frantic, soot-stained strangers bangs on his door, his better judgment forces him to let them in. They claim to be fleeing the whatever has happened at the lab, but as the night wears on and the radio reports become increasingly contradictory, Arthur realizes the threat isn’t just radiation. It’s the people currently turning his living room into a pressure cooker of lies and shifting loyalties. The film leans heavily on the real history of Oak Ridge, a secret city during the Manhattan Project. Director Matt Webb uses the location’s eerie, industrial legacy to make the setting feel like a character in its own right. “It was really peaceful here, until all of you showed up,” the man says, and you feel how exhausted this has made him.

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