Film Fests
Unnamed Footage Festival Vol. 8 Has an INCREDIBLE Lineup!
I’ve heard of the Unnamed Footage Festival for quite some time but hadn’t had the opportunity to be a part of it…until now. When I requested press accreditation for this festival, I had no clue what films would be screening, but I didn’t care. If you know me, you know how much I love found footage. Let’s just say the lineup for this festival is BONKERS. Among other prestigious partners for UFF this year, they happily welcome new partner FoundTV. If you’re unfamiliar with FoundTV, it’s a found footage streaming service that is giving the big horror streamers a run for their money. The Found Footage Horror and In-World-Camera Film Festival returns to San Francisco March 25-30, 2025, and offers a hybrid festival experience like no other. There will be a ton of events for in-person attendees to sink their teeth into, and I’m jealous of everyone who gets to be a part of that. But what films will they be showing?! Let’s take a look! Check Out the Killer Lineup at Unnamed Footage Festival 2025!
I’ve heard of the Unnamed Footage Festival for quite some time but hadn’t had the opportunity to be a part of it…until now. When I requested press accreditation for this festival, I had no clue what films would be screening, but I didn’t care. If you know me, you know how much I love found footage.
Let’s just say the lineup for this festival is BONKERS.
Among other prestigious partners for UFF this year, they happily welcome new partner FoundTV. If you’re unfamiliar with FoundTV, it’s a found footage streaming service that is giving the big horror streamers a run for their money. The Found Footage Horror and In-World-Camera Film Festival returns to San Francisco March 25-30, 2025, and offers a hybrid festival experience like no other.
There will be a ton of events for in-person attendees to sink their teeth into, and I’m jealous of everyone who gets to be a part of that. But what films will they be showing?! Let’s take a look!
Tickets can be purchased HERE.
Check Out the Killer Lineup at Unnamed Footage Festival 2025
Image courtesy of Unnamed Footage Festival
TINSMAN ROAD (2025, dir. Robbie Banfitch) (WORLD PREMIERE)
A young man searches for the body of his sister years after her tragic disappearance.
Shot fully on gritty 4:3 Mini-DV, Robbie Banfitch’s sophomore feature Tinsman Road takes us on an emotionally winding voyage into the wilderness of death and sorrow.
Image courtesy of Unnamed Footage Festival
I DON’T LIKE IT HERE (2025, dir. Robbie Smith)
A recently paroled outsider returns to his desolate hometown, only to find a community plagued by a disturbing darkness. As he grapples with his own past and the town’s sinister secrets, he becomes the prime suspect in a series of gruesome murders.
After his powerful directorial debut, Grieve, Robbie Smith returns with I Don’t Like it Here, a poignant hybrid found-footage film that builds on the eerie, voyeuristic camera work of Grieve and combines it segments of faux-documentary footage in order to create something deeply haunting and highly original. I Don’t Like it Here follows a parolee who returns to his childhood home to find his family missing.
WHAT HAPPENED TO DOROTHY BELL? (2024, dir. Danny Villanueva)
After uncovering disturbing revelations from her early childhood involving her late grandmother, Dorothy Bell, Ozzie Gray sets out to video document her investigation into these past events. Desperate for answers, she attempts to communicate with Dorothy’s spirit but unwittingly awakens something malevolent.
Featuring a star studded cast including Lisa Wilcox (A Nightmare on Elm Street 4 & 5) and Michael Hargrove (Candyman (2021), The Express (2008)) and a breakthrough lead performance from newcomer Asya Meadows, Dorothy Bell is found-footage gem, with intense scares and unexpected twists as it examines generational trauma through the lens of demonic possession.
Image courtesy of Unnamed Footage Festival
SOLVENT (2024, dir. Johannes Grenzfurthner)
While searching for Nazi documents in an Austrian farmhouse, a team of experts uncovers a hidden secret buried in its bowels. American expatriate Gunner S. Holbrook becomes obsessed with solving the mystery, and as his sanity wanes, he must confront an insatiable evil.
After screening Masking Threshold at UFF 6 and its divisive follow up Razzenest at UFF 7, we’re proud to share Solvent, the final film in Johannes Grenzfurthner’s loose trilogy of unconventional horror films. While Solvent is, perhaps, the most conventional of the three films, it retains Grenzfurthner’s signature touch of absolute insanity.
LEECH (2024, dir. David Dawson)
The trials, tribulations, and trolls of a Youtuber who calls himself The Dark Lord of Loves Park.
The Dark Lord of Loves Park live streams regularly in hopes of receiving donations from his viewers who are only watching to see him self-destruct. Inspired by King Cobra JFS, David Dawson (Flesh Games, The Long Weekend) returns with a mumblegore, screenlife film that explores the internet phenomenon of LOLCOWS.
It Doesn’t Get Any Better Than This (2023, USA, dir. Rachel Kempf, Nick Toti)
When a married couple (filmmakers Rachel Kempf, Nick Toti as themselves) purchase a rundown duplex in rural Missouri to be the set of their next horror film, they are delighted by the layers of graffiti and debris. Nick’s production of a documentary about their project and the entertaining dynamic between himself, Rachel, and her longtime bestie Christian gets sidetracked when strangers begin standing completely still outside their new home, silently staring at the house.
Hunting Matthew Nichols (2024, Canada, dir. Markian Tarasiuk)
Two decades after her brother’s disappearance, documentarian Tara Nichols (Miranda MacDougall) sets out to find answers. When she uncovers a disturbing piece of evidence: a horrific tape that the police covered up, she learns that there’s more to his disappearance than she’s been told, and that her brother could still be alive.
Dream Eater (2024, Canada, dir. Alex Lee Williams, Jay Drakulic, Mallory Drumm)
During a holiday at a remote cabin in the mountains, filmmaker Mallory Drumm decides to capture her boyfriend’s (Alex Lee Williams) strange parasomnia on camera. Despite their efforts, his episodes worsen, becoming violent and dangerous. As the couple seek a cure, they begin to expect that something more sinister is at play and begin to wonder if Alex’s malady is supernatural in origin.
Image courtesy of Unnamed Footage Festival
The Lost Episode (2024, Canada, dir. Nick Wernham)
The Lost Episode follows police officers Paul Massaro and Terrence Williams (Anthony Grant and Benjamin Sutherland) as they patrol the town of Franklin on Halloween night. As the night progresses, the officers respond to a series of increasingly disturbing calls and begin to suspect a diabolical conspiracy lurking in the heart of their small town.
Nightfall: A Paranormal Investigation (2024, Australia, dir. Myles McEwen, Ripley Stevens)
Two young paranormal detectives investigate a haunting. One wields a video camera and can record the spirits of the dead while the other brandishes headphones and a microphone that can capture their voices. Together they delve into a haunting that pushes their skills to the limit. This simple setup serves as a springboard for some of the best cinematography and sound design found footage horror has to offer.
The Rebrand (2024, Canada, dir. Kaye Adelaide)
Nicole, a pregnant videographer takes a gig helping a pair of lesbian lifestyle influencers who’ve seen their brand and their reputation destroyed after being cancelled for an unknown transgression. As she films their lives, she finds that the pair have far more quirks in person than their online personas reveal.
McCurdy Point (2025, USA, dir. Jeremy Brothers, Nick Paonessa)
McCurdy Point follows five friends who travel to an old cabin in the woods to celebrate, but instead find themselves targeted by a malicious force that defies explanation. Starring an ensemble cast of improv comedians, instead of scoring laughs, they build intense tension and massive scares as the force picks them off one-by-one.
Image courtesy of Unnamed Footage Festival
DOOBA DOOBA (2024, USA, dir. Ehrland Hollingsworth)
When aspiring singer Amna (Amna Vegha) is hired to babysit, she’s surprised to learn her ward is the 16-year-old Monroe (Betsy Sligh), a troubled shut-in who hasn’t left her home since watching her brother murdered. What ensues is a cat-and-mouse game with the tension of Creep and an absurdist sensibility of Too Many Cooks.
The Unsolved Love Hotel Murder Case Incident (2024, Japan, dir. Dave Jackson, Guy)
Dave Jackson and Guy, a pair of horror filmmakers and Australian expats living in Japan, decide to investigate their friend’s story of a murder and haunting at an abandoned love hotel. What starts off as a fun weekend trip becomes a nightmare when their friend vanishes and the love hotel turns out to actually be haunted.
Japandemonium (日本-悪魔) (2024, Japan, dir Sean Kurosawa / Kyosuke Koizumi, Nozomi Tomaki)
A double feature of Sean Kurosawa’s Girls Just Wanna Have Kill and Kyosuke Koizumi & Nozomi Tomaki’s Killmageddon, this midnight block is like seppuku for your senses. With minimal plot and maximal violence, Killmageddon is a blood-drenched fever dream. Girls Just Wanna Have Kill keeps up the insanity from its opening dedication to Cyndi Lauper to its splatter-pop idol heroine Momoko (Tenma Aida) and her gooey time-traveling hijinks.
What I Remember (2025, USA, dir. Alex Hera)
Based on Hera’s short film of the same title, What I Remember follows Ryan and Sam, a pair bound together by loneliness and by their deep desire to escape the bigotry and isolation of their rural hometown. Jumping between past and present, we watch Ryan and Sam’s relationship tenderly grow, all-the-while knowing that in the present Ryan has gone missing, may be dead, and that Sam is dead-set on finding the truth.
Distort (2025, Ireland, dir. Richard Waters)
A musician recording an album in the woods finds mysterious cassette tapes being left for him. On them, a woman researching an urban legend is being terrorised by a man and his vicious dog. A mix between Justin Benson / Aaron Moorhead’s Resolution and Turner Clay’s The Blackwell Ghost, Distort is a beautiful and welcomed return to the woods.
Image courtesy of Unnamed Footage Festival
Baleful (2024, Canada, dir. Denman Hatch)
Eddie has a serious problem. He doesn’t know what’s real. He doesn’t know who he is. He doesn’t know why he wakes up covered in blood. Baleful is a hybrid anthology film that brings the Unnamed Footage Festival 8 theme—“Video Never Lies”—to chilling fruition. As reality unravels for a small community, its members turn to their cameras for the truth… only to discover that some images can’t be unseen. From the creator of Canada’s #1 horror YouTube channel, Deformed Lunchbox, Baleful also marks the long-awaited return of Kenny vs Spenny’s Spencer Rice to the big screen.
Fat Tuesday (2018, USA, dir. Jorge Torres-Torres)
Cinema-in-Public is a term we’ve come up with to refer to narrative films shot guerilla-style in public places. The actors know they’re making a movie, but the public is none-the wiser. Examples are rare, and include oddities like Randy Moore’s Disney World-filmed Escaped from Tomorrow and Jason Banker’s Toad Road.
UFF is proud to present its first Cinema-In-Public screening, Fat Tuesday. Filmed in New Orleans on-location during Mardi Gras, a group of friends is preyed upon by a mysterious killer (Hannah Gross). Shot and edited by the criminally overlooked Jorge Torres-Torres (Toad Road, Sisters of the Plague) Fat Tuesday transcends traditional slashers by adding an element of verisimilitude previously unknown to the subgenre.
Reality Killers (2005, Italy, dir. Alessandro Capone, Pablo Dammicco, Volfango De Biasi, Francesco Maria Dominedò)
Reality Killers is a horror film in which a man obsessed with violent ‘snuff’ videos, featuring people being abused, tortured and killed, goes on to commit his own similar crimes. – Banned in the UK and lost for 20 years, Reality Killers is a surprisingly cinematic 90s style In-World-Camera film, which will find its theatrical debut as our Saturday, midnight screening.
I don’t know about you, but this sounds like it will be a BLAST! Keep an eye out for our reviews, and if you plan on attending, you can purchase tickets HERE.
If you’re not watching Indonesian horror, you’re missing out. The region is producing some of the craziest genre movies around right now, thanks in no small part to the efforts of writer-director Joko Anwar. His latest, Ghost in the Cell, which celebrated its North American premiere at Fantastic Fest 2026, combines everything we love about the filmmaker’s work—supernatural scares, inventive kills, and gnarly gore—along with a strong vein of comedy and political satire.
What is Ghost in the Cell About?
Ghost in the Cell centers around Dimas (Endy Arfian), a journalist whose life falls apart after he tries to run a story on corporate corruption and mysterious worker deaths. Wrongfully convicted of the horrific murder of his boss, Dimas finds himself with a one-way ticket to Cell Block C, where he quickly meets a colorful cast of prisoners—the good, the bad, and the seriously nasty. Among the good guys, there’s Anggoro (Abimana Aryasatya), who is constantly getting into trouble for defending fellow inmates, and Six (Yoga Pratama), who claims he can see people’s auras.
As if Dimas’ situation couldn’t get any worse, his arrival seems to trigger a series of brutal killings in the prison. Bodies are showing up mangled beyond recognition and displayed in positions that wouldn’t look out of place in Hannibal. It soon becomes clear that Dimas isn’t behind the murders, which begs the question: what did he bring in with him?
Anwar Embraces Horror-Comedy Whole-Heartedly
Prison is a scary place, and Anwar makes great use of the setting, with the action moving from the dingy showers where predators lurk to the bleak cellblock where inmates are at the mercy of their captors and the cafeteria where rival gangs eye each other up with ill intent.
But for all the human misery contained within the film, Ghost in the Cell is ultimately a horror-comedy, one that isn’t afraid to lean into broad slapstick and quippy dialogue when it wants to raise a chuckle. The tonal shifts can take a little while to adjust to, especially if your previous experience with Anwar comes from his more serious horror outings like Impetigore. This might be a problem if the film wasn’t actually funny, but Ghost in the Cell has enough laugh-out-loud moments to make you forget about any whiplash.
Ghost in the Cell Is a Genre-Bender to the Max
Comedy isn’t the only new flavor that Anwar has tossed into the mix. In Ghost in the Cell, dance sequences and martial-arts fight choreo sit side-by-side with some of the most extreme gore scenes seen outside a Terrifier movie in recent years. Then there’s the eerie way the spirit presents before it kills (trypophobia sufferers, beware) and the extensive critique of political corruption, power, and inequality. It’s an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach that shouldn’t work on paper, but under Anwar’s assured hand, it does.
It helps that for all the slapstick, the film lands a surprisingly earnest message, amplified by its vast ensemble cast. Dimas and Anggoro at times feel like main characters, but everyone in Ghost in the Cell has a big part to play, and that’s the point: in seemingly impossible circumstances, there’s strength in unity.
Ghost in the Cell Is an Endlessly Entertaining Blend of Goofiness, Heart, and Gore
If you’re looking for nonstop scares, you won’t find them in Ghost in the Cell. What you will find is a delightful blend of horror, comedy, and action that is apt to leave you grinning from ear to ear.
The film doesn’t skimp on the gore, throwing flesh and fluids at every surface. But it’s also charmingly goofy, with a cast that doesn’t take itself too seriously and a script that’s all too happy to devolve into a comedic dance scene when it feels like the spirit might strike. In every sense, Anwar is doing the most, and the end result is a film where there’s nary a dull moment in sight.
One of the great pleasures of attending Fantastic Fest is the ability to occasionally see movies that won’t be out for many months. That’s especially true with the Secret Screenings, which this year included a work-in-progress print of In a Violent Nature 2, a film that doesn’t even have a release date yet and made for a wildly entertaining midnight movie surprise.
While a few things may change between now and release, the cut shown at Fantastic Fest felt near-final. Here’s what you can look forward to when this sequel eventually slashes its way onto our screens.
Johnny Returns in In a Violent Nature 2
In a Violent Nature 2 picks up right where the action of its predecessor left off, while also introducing new aspects of the lore that slightly contradict or complicate what has already been established, a nod to the way that slasher sequels throw in new plot elements willy-nilly to suit their needs.
The second film centers on Alex (Lucas Nguyen), a quiet 14-year-old kid who misses the bus home from camp because his bullies have stuffed him in a trunk. Since his older sister works at the camp, he gets to hang out for the night while the counselors celebrate the end of the season. Unfortunately, an old fireman’s whistle has drawn the mute, hulking Johnny (Ry Barrett) to the camp—and before long, their night of revelry has turned into one of unimaginable horror.
Less Walking, More Killing
Chris Nash, who wrote and directed the first film, handles scripting duties this time around, with Nate Wilson—who served as first assistant director on the original—stepping into the director role. It feels as though Nash may have listened to viewers’ complaints about how much walking was in the original, because In a Violent Nature 2 takes a break from following Johnny on his lumbering mission. Instead, the camera largely chases Alex through the woods as he runs, trips, and stumbles away from the carnage.
This change is a mixed bag. Alex may be more a dynamic figure to follow overall, but he also makes some frustratingly poor choices, and his teenage moodiness makes him a little unlikeable. The first film also succeeded, in part, because it consciously played into how audiences consume slasher movies, with their sympathies shifting from cheering on the killer to rooting for the final girl when she triumphantly emerges. In a Violent Nature 2 feels like less of a meta-commentary on the slasher genre, though it still has plenty to offer fans of the genre, especially when it comes to kills.
In a Violent Nature 2 Takes the Gore to a Whole New Level
Mention In a Violent Nature to a horror fan and they’ll probably bring up the yoga kill within 10 seconds. For the sequel, Nash and Wilson attempt to up the ante—no small feat considering just how violent the first film was. It’s hard to top that particular kill, but In a Violent Nature 2 certainly gives it the old college try.
Shifting the focus from a single group of friends to an entire summer camp, even one that’s emptying out, instantly ups the potential body count (and harkens back to the slasher films of yore). Counsellors are slaughtered in droves, in ways more brutal than anything seen in the original film, with a few kills in particular sure to get people talking. It’s a real treat for fans of practical effects, and it’s great to see that even horror films positioning themselves as more “elevated” than the typical fare can have fun and get their hands bloody.
A Possible Set up for Another Sequel?
Minor spoilers ahead.
In a Violent Nature 2 feels like something of a response to the reception of the first film, removing what people didn’t like and piling on more of what they did. The result is a movie that feels a little less focused and meditative than its predecessor, but still incredibly fun. And with a third film heavily teased in the final minutes, it seems like we’ll be seeing more of Johnny in the near future. Based on the trajectory of other slashers, can we expect to see him fighting a psychic child next? Or—dare we dream—is he preparing for a trip to space?
Only time will tell. Better lace up your walking shoes.
When Does In a Violent Nature 2 Come Out?
In a Violent Nature 2 is slated to hit theaters sometime in 2026. Keep an eye on IFC Films and Shudder’s socials for more release information as it becomes available.
