Misc
‘Five Nights at Freddy’s’ and The Story of William Afton Explained
If my other articles were individual lectures, this? This is the whole seminar.
Welcome back to Horror 101, a series of articles where we explain horror movie legends and their lore. For beginners, the confused, or just those who need a refresher, these articles are for you.
It’s time you FNAF lovers. Time to rip apart the meaty animatronic lore all over again. Or, if any of this info is wrong, to put me inside a springlock suit for slandering Scott Cawthon’s child. Maybe I misplaced an event, maybe I’ll accidentally call a Toy suit a Funtime suit, who knows. Just don’t murder me yet.
In honor of the fast-approaching Blumhouse adaptation, Five Nights at Freddy’s, we’ll get down to the heart of horror gaming’s most popular franchise and find the man behind the slaughter. How are these animatronics killing people, and more importantly, why are they killing people? Who started it all?
Five Nights at Freddy’s is probably the most complicated series I’ve ever covered, as a lot of the fun of FNAF is deciphering its storytelling. As such, I need to establish some boundaries so this article doesn’t become a hot mess.
I’m not going to be discussing any non-game materials, including graphic novels, guides, and books like The Silver Eyes because of their dubious canonicity.
- I’m also not including any speculation that isn’t given clear backing by the events of the games. I don’t have Mat Pat’s mental fortitude.
- I’m not covering any games past the sixth and seventh (Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator & Ultimate Custom Night) because, while Steel Wool’s games are connected to the original story, they don’t concern the main subject of this article.
All good? Wonderful! Let’s get started.
Without further ado, major spoilers for the first seven Five Nights at Freddy’s games.
Who Is William Afton in Five Nights at Freddy’s?
The story of Five Nights at Freddy’s begins with the unassuming William Afton, also known as Purple Guy because of how his sprite is presented in the games. Starting as an entrepreneur and mild-mannered family man, Afton would become one of the most notorious serial killers of his time.
He had a wife and three children: Michael, Elizabeth, and Michael’s unnamed younger brother (dubbed the Crying Child by fans).
Afton founded Fredbear’s Family Diner, a precursor to Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. Like the real-life Chuck E. Cheese and Showbiz Pizza restaurants, the main selling point of Fredbear’s was its costume mascots: Fredbear and Bonnie the Bunny. Despite Fredbear being the face of the company, Afton would later use the Bonnie suit most frequently in his murders and would suffer greatly for his fondness of the character.
Matthew Lillard, known for portraying the unforgettable Stu Macher in Scream, will play William Afton in the film. While it isn’t confirmed, a lot of fans suspect that Josh Hutcherson’s character Mike Schmidt (who you play as in the first Five Nights at Freddy’s game) is an alias of William’s eldest son, Michael Afton.
Who Created the Five Nights at Freddy’s Animatronics?
Afton came to collaborate with a man named Henry Emily. A robotics expert who taught Afton the trade, Emily took Afton’s suits and developed full-fledged animatronics from them that could even walk independently. Henry Emily doesn’t have a confirmed casting for the film, but actor Christian Stokes will be playing the role of “Hank”. Some fans suspect this could be Henry given the nickname.
Emily and Afton came up with multiple makes and models of animatronics, though their most remarkable versions were springlock suits: suits that could be converted into free-standing animatronics and back again. The springlocks were eventually revealed to have one glaring mechanical failure: sudden movements could cause the suits to lock up and seize around any person or thing inside them, often paralyzing and horribly injuring them. The glaring flaw would put springlock suits at the center of a tragedy known as the Bite of ’83.
What Was the Bite of ’83 in Five Nights at Freddy’s?
I remember back in my day we all thought it was the Bite of ’87.
Man, I feel old.
…RIGHT. SO, WHAT WAS THE BITE OF ’83?
Sorry.
In 1983, Michael was forced to babysit his brother during a birthday party at Fredbear’s. As part of a mean-spirited prank, he and his friends pushed his younger brother’s head into the open mouth of the Fredbear animatronic. The springlock suit’s mechanisms seized up from the child’s panicked flailing, “biting” his skull. He would die days later after being haunted by nightmares of the animatronics, as shown in Five Nights at Freddy’s 4.
A grieving Afton succumbed to madness and committed his first murder: the daughter of his business partner Henry Emily, outside of the Fredbear’s Family Diner location. These two events resulted in the closure of Fredbear’s Family Diner and the retirement of both suits on stage at the time of the incident, the golden Fredbear and golden Bonnie springlock suits.
Afton and Emily tried to move on, pouring their resources into a new venue: Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, complete with a new cast of animatronics headlined by Freddy Fazbear, a new blue version of Bonnie the Bunny, Foxy the Pirate Fox, and Chica the Chicken. These are the mainstay suits we’ll be seeing in the movie, and the ones most of the other animatronics are based on.
Of course, Afton’s bloodlust wouldn’t stop there. He slowly began to give in to his sadistic cravings, killing five more victims and hiding their bodies inside each of the animatronic suits (including the retired Golden Freddy suit). He used the springlock Bonnie suit when committing these murders, and while Afton was among the suspects, the missing cases were never solved. Emily still suspected his business partner of the crimes and ousted Afton from the company.
How Are the Five Nights at Freddy’s Animatronics Haunted?
Though nobody knew at the time, the agony of the victims allowed their souls to be bonded to the metal, creating a substance known as “Remnant”. This process caused the confused and tortured souls to become vengeful and murderous, targeting the night security of the restaurant (who you play as in the first Five Nights at Freddy’s).
Remnant could even trap souls in their original bodies. A grown Michael Afton would later discover his father’s machines, only to be killed and briefly worn as a “suit” by another animatronic. The Remnant injected in him during this event allowed Michael’s broken body to rise from the dead, clinging to life from an obsession with finding and stopping his father.
Both Afton and Emily would continue making animatronics, all of which met the same fate. Afton created a rival mascot with more advanced technology called Circus Baby, which would malfunction and kill his daughter Elizabeth, causing her to haunt the suit. Henry Emily would then go on to reopen Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria years later in 1987, with new “Toy Animatronics”: updated versions of the old cast wired to protect children and detect predators with facial recognition.
How Did William Afton Die in Five Nights at Freddy’s?
Afton’s second spree began in 1987 with the sabotage of the pizzeria’s grand reopening. Tainting the new Toy Animatronics with another series of killings, they became especially aggressive towards adults (as seen in Five Nights at Freddy’s 2, for those of you keeping track at home). This resulted in another shutdown, and the toy animatronics being decommissioned.
Eventually, Afton came across the original animatronics he had used to hide the bodies moving without being activated. After dismantling them one by one, in either an attempt to hide his crimes or understand their inner workings, he discovered the secret of Remnant.
On one of his many returns to the crime scene, Afton was cornered by the children’s spirits in a hidden backroom of the original pizzeria. Hoping the springlock Bonnie suit would instill the same fear in them in death as it had in life, he donned the worn-down costume. A total springlock failure from his frantic movements caused the suit to clamp down around him, crushing him to death.
Who Is Springtrap?
When Emily discovered his old business partner’s body, he sealed the room off and left Afton’s remains to rot. Like the children before him, Afton’s spirit became tangled with the metal of the Bonnie suit, creating Remnant and tying him to the material world. This transformation would see Afton reborn in the monster known as Springtrap.
The rotted-out Springtrap would be unearthed years later during the events of Five Nights at Freddy’s 3. The pizzeria was repurposed for a horror attraction called Fazbear’s Fright; a sort of extreme haunt focused on the “urban legends” surrounding the murders. When Michael Afton took a job as the attraction’s security and discovered his father was still alive through the suit, he burned down Fazbear’s Fright in a failed effort to kill Springtrap.
One of the featured suits in the film’s trailer was a tattered Golden Bonnie suit, the same one that Afton died in around the events of Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. Whether Afton is already dead in the film is uncertain, but I would be surprised if he was since the suit in the game is much more decayed than what we’ve seen. They’ll probably save his resurrection for the second and third movies.
Neither of which have been confirmed, but… come on. We both know they’re happening.
How Were the Five Nights at Freddy’s Animatronics Destroyed?
Emily and Afton became embroiled in a game of cat and mouse following the burning of Fazbear’s Fright. Through Emily’s research on Remnant, he found it could be destroyed by melting; he then constructed a labyrinth, a mock restaurant that would draw any remaining animatronics that hadn’t been scrapped. Finally, he hired a security guard as bait: an undead Michael Afton, looking to stop his father.
Henry Emily, Michael Afton, and William Afton would perish alongside each other with all the other animatronics brought to the maze. The fire set this time would destroy nearly every trace of the murders and their culprit; with their killer vanquished and their animatronic vessels destroyed, the children’s spirits were freed. In the game Ultimate Custom Night, Afton’s soul is shown condemned to a hell that repeats the events of the games forever and forces him to face his most violent creations on a loop, screaming for Michael’s help.
Afton’s creations would live on though, with Fazbear Entertainment being bought up and revived by a third party… which I’m not talking about today! But almost definitely in a future article, dear reader.
FNAF comes back. It always comes back.
***
And that will be it for today’s Horror 101 lesson. See you in the next class and stay tuned to Horror Press’s social media feeds for more content on horror movies, television, and everything in between!
From October 16 to 25, horror fans, filmmakers, writers, and artists gathered in Williamsburg, Brooklyn for ten days of film screenings, panels, live podcast recordings, Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies lectures, an artisans’ market, networking opportunities, and parties. It was Brooklyn Horror Film Festival’s milestone 10-year anniversary. While there were, of course, first-timers in attendance, the majority, it seemed, have been going to the Festival for years—a testament to not only the expertise of the organizers and programmers, but to their dedication to the horror community as well.
How Brooklyn Horror Film Festival Began
Justin Timms, Founder and Festival Director, created Brooklyn Horror Film Festival in 2016. At the time, he had been working as an editor and post supervisor, bouncing back and forth between FilmRise and a video production company that made internal videos for major companies, like Pepsi. BHFF was initially intended to be a side project to satisfy his lifelong interest in the horror genre.
“I’ve always been into horror. They’ve always been the movies that I wanted to see,” he said. “The types of movies that I love weren’t playing festivals in New York, so I just had this crazy idea that I could start a film festival.”
So, that’s exactly what he did. One of the first people to join the team was Director of Programming Matt Barone. He and Timms followed each other on Twitter, and when Timms posted about the festival, Barone, whose love of horror began when his father showed him Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein when he was six or seven years old, reached out. Barone had been writing about music, reviewing horror films, and covering film festivals for a number of years, and was interested in pursuing a path in festival programming. Since this was BHFF’s debut on the scene, he took on the task of reaching out to filmmakers to create the festival lineup. That first year, BHFF opened with Dearest Sister by Laotian filmmaker Mattie Do, closed with Child Eater by Erlingur Thororddsen, and also featured We Are The Flesh by Emiliano Rocha Minter as the centerpiece film and Without Name by Lorcan Finnegan and Garret Shanley, which won the Festival’s award for Best Cinematography.
Pictured above, Tori Potenza and Joseph Hernandez. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival
A Decade of Growth and an Expanding Programming Vision
Ten years in, BHFF has grown exponentially, from a weekend-long stretch of screenings to a fully-formed film festival spread over ten days. It’s also established a reputation of excellence and receives hundreds of submissions each year, requiring a team of screeners in addition to programmers. Programming a film festival is a major responsibility—one that Senior Programmer and Director of Community Development Joseph Hernandez takes very seriously.
“You are a curator that has a huge influence on filmmakers that are seen or not seen, films that that are being recommended and placed in the public eye,” Hernandez said. “You have a true power in guiding trends, [including] which kinds of filmmakers are being represented in the overall landscape. [It’s a] huge, huge responsibility that I don’t take lightly.”
From Early Horror Fans to Key Festival Programmers
Like Barone, Hernandez has been with the Festival since the beginning. He had been working with the Tribeca Film Festival on the theater operation side of things and wanted to shift to a more film-focused role. A horror fan since his preteen years through Goosebumps books and Scooby Doo (with early childhood exposure to classics like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th that led to “a recurring Freddy Krueger nightmare”), reaching out to Timms to get involved with Brooklyn Horror Film Festival seemed like the perfect starting-off point. That first year, he was a screener and also introduced films, moderated Q&As, and helped with venue management. After that, he was promoted to programmer.
“As I learned what the role truly entailed, I was able to grow this whole [new] appreciation for what film festivals do and what their function truly is,” he said. “You get to see firsthand the difference that you’re making. You see how excited and happy [the filmmakers] are. You see all these audience members coming up to them and praising their work. I think a lot of filmmaking is behind closed doors, and it can be a very lonely experience. [For some, this is] their first opportunity of not just showing their work, but also being able to take that victory lap, when they get to finally put that movie in front of an audience. What we do is life changing for a lot of artists, and that makes a lot of the work and sleepless nights so much more worth it.”
Pictured above, NYC horror icon, Xero Gravity, and film critic/playwright Sharai Bohannon. Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival
How Programming Shapes Filmmakers and the Genre
Hernandez is also an actor and filmmaker, and says that his experience as a programmer has helped him grow creatively.
“The best thing that any young filmmaker can do is watch as many films as possible. It could be bad films; it could be good films. You’re going to learn something from every viewing,” he said. “You’re developing those film analysis muscles that really help you to pick apart why something works in a film and why it doesn’t. It’s such a great classroom. I watch like, 1,000 movies a year for Brooklyn, and that just keeps me growing and sharpening those muscles and tools.”
Curating a Diverse and Audience Focused Horror Lineup
Of the actual process of programming, Hernandez stresses the importance of building a program for a wide audience.
“Each film you select doesn’t have to be something that is going to be unanimously liked, but there should be films in your program for every kind of viewer. This goes back to our responsibility as programmers. You have to be selfless. You can’t build a program just to your tastes.”
Hernandez notes that one of the Festival’s objectives is to demonstrate how vast the spectrum of horror is. If you ask him, it’s the key to bringing more people in.
“I think it’s very easy for someone to say, ‘Oh, I don’t like horror’, while their idea of horror is just a gory slasher film. That is a misperception that I blame on the marketing of the ’80s, when we had that huge slasher sequel boom, and that just became the mainstream definition of what a horror film was,” he said. He cites Silence of the Lambs as a case study on how this narrow definition of horror has led to mainstream audiences misunderstanding what horror is. “Horror doesn’t even have to be scary. Horror could be funny, it can be psychological, it could be so many things. We try to show that within our program, and that’s kind of what gave birth to our Head Trip section. These are films that are very much on the margins, but do fall into the Venn diagram. I think that’s another way that we can help the horror genre to survive and persevere: by showing that it encompasses so much more, and getting rid of that narrow stigma.”
Representation, Inclusivity, and Marginalized Voices in Horror
Beyond honoring the full scope of the genre, representation and inclusivity are always top priorities at BHFF. It’s reflected in not only the consistently diverse lineup, but in highlighted sections, like this year’s spotlight on Black horror and the annual “Slayed” block for LGBTQ+ short films. Nearly 50% of this year’s program was also woman-directed.
“There’s so much horror coming out nowadays because it’s having a big resurgence, which is awesome, but we’re getting so many prequels and reboots and requels,” writer, film critic, and programmer Tori Potenza said. “There are just so many great indie films out there coming from marginalized voices [so it’s] really important to highlight [them]. It feels like [the Festival has] always been ahead of the curve there.”
Championing Diversity, Queer Voices, and Inclusive Horror
It’s a sentiment shared by Hernandez, as well as by writer and emcee Xero Gravity, who is also deeply involved in BHFF:
“Everything else around us changes, and this is the little pocket that we have that stays consistent,” she said. “Something that I love about Brooklyn Horror is that we’re very adamant about queer liberation and giving queer voices their own spot, [and] there was also a slate specifically for Black horror. There’s a lot of pandering in the outside world, and [maybe] 5% of it is genuine. But this is something that’s very consistent with with Brooklyn Horror—these people just fucking get it, and that’s the great thing about having an intersectional community. When I’m up there introducing films or doing Q&As, I look into the audience and I see an array of people. I see white people, I see Black people, I see disabled people, I see queer people scattered amongst the audience. [BHFF] really recognizes the diversity of their audience and don’t use that as a pandering, but [instead] use that as ‘Okay, these are the people who we have in seats, and we should make sure that they feel welcome.’”
Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
Filmmakers Share Their Incredible Experiences
Of course, BHFF isn’t just exciting for fans—it’s also thrilling for filmmakers, especially if they’re presenting work. Filmmakers Jasmine Osean Thomas and Ksusha Genenfeld came this year because their short film, Candy, was selected for the “Home Invasion” shorts block. This was the first time that Thomas, the writer and director, came to the Festival; it was the second time for Genenfeld, the cinematographer.
“I’d been following Brooklyn horror for a while because I know the quality of work that they support is unbelievable and very diverse,” Thomas said. “When I got in, it was like fireworks. I’m a die-hard horror fan. I’ve been since I was a little kid. So to get into something like this, where the genre is so celebrated, and to be amongst my people was so great. The work at this festival is just a different quality and caliber that should be celebrated forever. I’m just so honored to be part of this. And beyond that, the way that the festival supports filmmakers locally, but also brings in filmmakers, like to the Women In Horror networking event, sets it apart from any other film festival I’ve been to. It’s about community, it’s about horror, and it’s about celebrating not just your own film, but everyone else’s films.”
“I feel like it’s always the best time ever. I always meet new people and new filmmakers, so it’s always exciting to come back and be here,” Genenfeld added.
More Than Just Horror: Lectures, Parties, Markets, and Live Events Too
BHFF doesn’t only feature films, though. In addition to the scheduled screenings, there are also always additional events, like academic lectures held with Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, parties, live podcast recordings, and this year, an artisans’ market.
“It can’t just be all about the movies,” Hernandez said. “We need to provide a variety of events and activities to diversify our offerings. You can get burnt out if you’re just going from movie to movie to movie, but if you’re buffering in between, doing something completely different, that’s a lot of fun. Then you can catch your second wind and go see another movie. It really helps the whole festival experience. We never aspire to be a screening series. We want it to be a full-fledged festival.”
Creating Dedicated Spaces for Women and Queer Horror Fans
In recent years, one of the events has been a mixer for women in the horror community, spearheaded by Potenza and Caryn Coleman, the founder of the organization The Future of Film Is Female. Potenza recalls that the realization that a women-specific event came when she was in the middle of a conversation with another woman during a BHFF happy hour, and a man interrupted them to “explain” the monstrous feminine.
“That felt like a really big sign that we needed our own space—women and queer folk outside of the cis, straight, male-dominated space,” Potenza said. She teamed up with Coleman, and they started to organize happy hours and meetups in the off-festival season.
“Once the festival came, it seemed like a really easy way to add in an event specifically for this particular population of genre fans that clearly love it and attend. The programming staff here seemed down to do it. [There are] so many women and queer folks that are filmmakers and writers or just fans, and we all just hang out. The energy that comes off of that many women and queer folks in one space…I think we could rule the world if we harness that energy for a specific use.”
The Future of Film Is Female and Its Connection to Brooklyn Horror Film Festival
Coleman created The Future of Film Is Female in 2018 as an off-shoot of the Nitehawk Shorts Festival, which she had started in 2013.
“It was born out of all the relationships that I had with the shorts filmmakers from that, of all genders, and particularly out of the 2016 election,” she said. “We opened the 2016 Shorts Festival the day after the election, thinking that it was going to go a very different way. I thought about my position as a film programmer and what I could do to help get marginalized voices heard and seen.”
Coleman also launched a biannual The Future of Film Is Female film series at MoMA, and in 2022, co-curated a 10-week horror film series at MoMA called “Messaging the Monstrous” with Ron Magliosi and Brittany Shaw.
“It was the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” she said. “My whole life was a 10-week horror series that looked at horror films made from 1960 forward, with the premise that horror has meaning. So we did 10 one-week subgenres ranging from eco horror to Women Make Horror to slashers, unpacking the damage or the success that slashers have done in the horror genre. And we had guests come. It was about 115 films in total, features and some short films.”
Coleman’s Role at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival
Coleman has been involved with Brooklyn Horror Film Festival for years. She’s been a jurist, a programmer…and was instrumental in bringing the Festival to Nitehawk because at the time, she was Nitehawk’s Director of Programming.
“I’ve known Justin [Timms] for a while, so there’s always been a little bit of crossover,” she said. “Two years ago, I was a programmer for the Festival, and then, with Tori thinking about how to gather the troops in terms of women in horror, and how to create more of a community space for them, both for the festival and then outside of the festival, because I do a lot of horror programming outside of Brooklyn—horror all year round!—and how we can continue to be together and supportive, but also just celebrate films together. That’s the best part about seeing movies: talking about them before and afterwards.”
Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
How Nitehawk Williamsburg Became BHFF’s Home Base
There’s no shortage of audience togetherness at Brooklyn Horror Film Festival. Everyone interviewed for this article had nothing but glowing accolades for the way that this organization has fostered a strong sense of community among horror fans and creators. One of the ways this is achieved is surprisingly simple: having the Festival centralized in one location. The first Brooklyn Horror Film Festival was spread across multiple venues. Now, thanks to Coleman, it’s held at Nitehawk Williamsburg, an intimate triplex with a lobby bar, as well as a bar on the lower level called Lo-Res.
“The fact that we get to fully be here at Nitehawk is the dream,” Barone said. “This is where you can build a community. People can hang out, have drinks, and talk. It used to be [where] you [had] to see a movie [and] get on a train [to] see the next movie. We’ve evolved now to where we can just do it in one central area [and] neighborhood. It’s the ideal setup.”
A Festival That Feels Like Family
Toby Poser and Zelda Adams, two members of the iconic Adams Family filmmaking team, returned to Brooklyn Horror Film Festival this year to present their latest feature, Mother of Flies. In previous years, their films Hellbender and Where the Devil Roams screened at the Festival. Matriarch Poser says that the venue helps to encourage intimacy and community.
“We have the bar downstair and the bar-slash-lobby upstairs with all the great physical media. It’s like a big horror hug the minute you walk in,” she said. “And it’s so because of this intimacy that you meet everyone, you talk, and it’s just a beautiful thing.”
Adams, Poser’s daughter and co-writer, co-director, and co-star of Mother of Flies (along with John Adams, her father/Poser’s husband), was also excited to return to Festival, especially because of the sense of community at BHFF.
“After our first [time] submitting our film and luckily getting in, we experienced the fantastic community here,” she said. “Everyone loves horror so much and is so supportive, too. And it’s such an intimate theater, so it feels like a special viewing experience. The Q&As are also really kind and exciting, too, and the events they host with Brooklyn Horror are fantastic as well. It’s really great bringing Mother of Flies to the festival today, because I feel like we’ve cultivated even more of a community, and it’s nice because people get to come to the same theater and see how our films have changed so much since our first film here, and maybe how our story has changed and how we’ve grown as filmmakers.”
A Sound Designer’s Love Letter to the Horror Community
Another artist who revels in the community atmosphere of BHFF is sound designer Genna Edwards. She first came to the Festival in 2023 for the premiere of Cannibal Mukbang, which she worked on with writer-director Aimee Kuge, who also serves as BHFF’s Communication’s Manager.
“That was my first time at this festival, and it rocked my fucking world,” Edwards said. “I had never experienced such love and joy. You’re just in a room constantly with other horror freaks. I feel like people who aren’t in the community kind of look at us in a weird way, but when you’re in a room with all these folks who understand what all of this means, it’s just different, and I felt that instantly. Every year, I try to be here because it’s the best and they also program incredible work.”
Year Round Horror Events That Strengthen Community
A major thing that sets Brooklyn Horror apart from other film festivals is that it expands beyond a yearly event, and has become a central knot within the New York City horror community. Hernandez is largely to thank for that. In addition to programming the Festival, he regularly organizes advance screenings for new horror films, always followed by casual get-togethers at nearby bars to talk about the film, make friends, and network.
“I love what we do with the Festival. That is our main event of the year, but I quickly realized that a year in between editions is way too long, and community building is so important to what has gotten Brooklyn Horror to be what it is. There’s no reason why we need to limit that to one week a year,” he said. “So I really wanted to start providing stuff year round to keep the community engaged with each other, to keep it growing. At this point, it’s just been partnering with different studios to get early screenings of new horror films, and then after the screenings, just designate a place where everyone can meet afterwards and talk and catch up with each other, pick apart the film, talk about what’s going on in their lives, and just providing a safe space for the community to look forward to once or twice a month and stay connected.”
Why BHFF Is One of the Warmest Communities in Horror
Genenfeld described the horror community, particularly when it comes to BHFF, as “the warmest community in the film industry.”
“Everyone’s just so welcoming and everybody is really excited to connect, which I feel like is not very often seen,” she said. “So that’s really special about this festival.”
Having a community is vital, no matter who you are or what you’re interested in. For people interested in horror—something that is still misunderstood, maligned, and stigmatized—having a community of likeminded people can be a lifeline. New York has always had horror fans and horror-related events, but according to Barone and Hernandez, there hadn’t really been a solid, consistent community until Brooklyn Horror. BHFF and the off-season events—which have plenty of crossover with The Future of Film Is Female—have facilitated countless friendships and collaborations, not only strengthening the horror community as a whole, but empowering and affirming fans, artists, and writers on an individual level. For Hernandez, it’s helped him become more confident and comfortable going out and meeting people.
Brooklyn Horror Film Festival’s Impact on Creativity and Collaboration
For Edwards (and many others), the Festival has been a game changer both socially and professionally.
“You wait all your life to find people who care about the same things you do, especially if those things aren’t normal or socially acceptable, and then I came to this festival, and there were a bunch of other people who were like, ‘Yo, I want to see a decapitation on film. The nastier the better!’ I can finally be myself here and be as out about all of this stuff as I want to be—and people don’t look at you like a freak. They just accept you. And then we all make work together. I’ve worked on so many films with a bunch of the people in this community, and it only seems to keep happening, which I’m so freaking grateful for.”
Pictured above, the crew behind BHFF! Photo courtesy of Brooklyn Horror Film Festival.
Brooklyn Horror Film Festival Returns in 2026
At the time of this writing, Brooklyn Horror Film Festival is already hosting an off-season event—an advance screening of Sisu: Road to Revenge with a meet-up at a bar called The High Note. The festival run may have ended, but the organization operates year-round. It fills a need for horror fans. Not just the need for the latest films, but the greater need for solidarity, community, and friendship.
The horror genre may be awash with blood, guts, family tension, psychological distress, aliens, monsters, and human depravity. But the horror community? That’s all heart.
Brooklyn Horror Film Festival will return to Nitehawk Cinema October 15 – 22, 2026 ! Early bird discounts are now available for film badges and film submissions!
Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone, the Holiday season has REALLY kicked off. We’ve covered our fair share of Holiday horror from underappreciated gems like Christmas Bloody Christmas and Dial Code Santa Claus to Black Christmas and Krampus! In the hopes of spreading some Holiday cheer (and fear!), the curator of all things Horror Press, James-Michael, has decided to bring the cloven-foot killer that is Krampus into your homes! But this isn’t your ordinary Krampus…this Krampus is chock full of special features and gift wrapped in 4K!
If you haven’t seen Krampus, then what are you doing with your life? For those unfamiliar, Krampus follows a large family gathering of frustrating people who all get snowed in three days before Christmas. One by one, the family gets picked off by Christmas-themed creatures. Sometimes, the holidays truly are killer.
Enter Our Holiday Giveaway!
How to Enter:
Step 1. Make sure to FOLLOW US ON INSTAGRAM!
Step 2. LIKE the giveaway post!
Step 3. TAG A FRIEND who you think Krampus should visit!
The winner will be announced on Monday, December 15th and notified via direct message. If the winner does not respond within 24 hours, we’ll randomly select another winner.
WHAT YOU’LL WIN
What’s included in Krampus: The Naughty Cut? Let’s unwrap it and look:
- Audio commentary with director/co-writer Michael Dougherty, and co-writers Todd Casey and Zach Shields
- NEW interviews with Michael Dougherty, Visual Effects Artist Richard Taylor, Actors Allison Tolman, David Koechner and Emjay Anthony, Co-Writer/Co-Producer Todd Casey and more…
- Alternate ending
- Deleted/extended scenes
- Gag reel
- Krampus Comes Alive! – Five-part featurette including Dougherty’s Vision, The Naughty Ones: Meet the Cast, Krampus and his Minions, Practical Danger, and Inside the Snowglobe: Production Design
- Behind the scenes at WETA Workshop: Krampus
- And more!
So head over to our Instagram, follow our account, like our giveaway post, and tag a friend who you think Krampus should go visit!
Good luck!
**Giveaway entries are limited to addresses in the United States.**
**All entries must be 18 or older to enter**
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