Official Selection
A Friendly Referral
Director: Edward Mizner
A babysitter discovers an evil secret about the family she's working for.
Festival Season
2025 Official Selections
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Official Selection
Splashdown
Writer: Don Stroud
Discovering a derelict NASA space capsule floating in the middle of the Pacific ocean, a disillusioned Air Force pilot and his family fight for their lives against a covert military force bent on retrieving the astronauts and their other-worldly payload.
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Official Selection
She Couldn’t Put It Down
Director: Peter Hardy
A book lover meets a guy she likes in a park -- but she should pay more attention to her surroundings.
Official Selection
Sight Specific
Writer: Peter Hardy
A woman attending a theatre performance that takes place in an old house begins to realize that she is seeing people on stage that no one else see -- a young maid being terrorized by a cruel master, ghosts from the house's past.
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Official Selection
The Man Within
Directors: Pierre de Mûelenaere, Antoine Veldekens
Ever since Antoine hung a monumental portrait in his living room, his grasp on reality has been slipping, rendering him incapable of leaving his apartment. Now Antoine must confront the sinister forces lurking within the painting. "The Man Within" is the story of possession, capturing the moment of enactment. Directed by Pierre de Mûelenaere and Antoine Veldekens, "The Man Within" marks their debut as a directing duo. It serves as the first chapter of a larger story called "The Deep," which revolves around a series of demonic paintings.
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Official Selection
The Redress of Verely Ambrose [SCRIPT]
![The Redress of Verely Ambrose [SCRIPT] generated official selection laurel](https://darkfest.net/home/wp-content/uploads/darkfest-laurels/official-selections/Official-Selections-2025/the-redress-of-verely-ambrose-script-official-selection-f55d9062-1024x1024.png)
Writer: Stuart Mackie Ellis
Verely Ambrose was sentenced to death for a murder she didn’t commit. When new evidence exonerates her, she is quietly released and compensated for her wrongful conviction. But her redress has been…re-dressed.
Official Selection
Garrota
Writer: Arthur Ericsson
Memory is its own kind of escape. A quiet, undersized inmate uses brutal ingenuity to escape a sadistic outdoor lockup, driven by the trauma of a past attack and the family he lost.
Official Selection
Vic Effects
Director: Chris Shern
A up and coming Foley artist is hired to create sound effects for a horror film, but the job triggers forces that goes beyond what's on the screen.
Official Selection
Blood and Dust
Director: RJ Maurer
A cold-blooded sniper hunts down a mysterious briefcase in 1998 Kern County
Official Selection
We Regret to Inform You
Director: Michelle Bossy
Set in a dystopian near future where everyone is provided with a 24-hour warning before their death by the government, Mariam receives such a call from Bob, a real-life operator that is on his first day on the job, informing her of her final day.
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Official Selection
Darkroom
Directors: Evalee Lowrey, Brenna Crace
A young photo store clerk finds a mysterious envelope of film negatives. Upon developing them, he discovers a sinister connection to the photographer.
Official Selection
Sous Vide (soo VEED)
Directors: Luke Van Garza, Martha Louise Van Garza
After attending the funeral of her Scandinavian fiancé's mother, an American woman must decide whether to honor the mother's last wishes by partaking in a time-honored family tradition. This is a study in ethical cultural practices, the respect for final wishes, partnerships, and family. It’s an intense, uncomfortable time in which an American woman must decide where her loyalties lie and open her mind to new ideas, cultures, and (ahem) flavors.
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Official Selection
A Super Friendly Guy
Writer: Mićo Ivanović
David is a super friendly guy during the day. But is he really that friendly at the end of the day?
Official Selection
Dark Places I have known Episode Three “Too far too close”
Director: Juergen Hirsch
Ada Kemp is plagued by nightmares after the mysterious disappearance of her daughter Stevie, whose presence feels both achingly near and impossibly distant. As reality blurs with dream and the boundaries of time and space begin to dissolve, Ada reaches out to Detective Elva Monroe for help. But when he arrives, it may already be too late—Ada is slipping into the Dark Place, where nothing can be trusted.
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Official Selection
Match
Director: Victor Basallote
Rachel, a bored and insomniac young woman, contacts Zalir through a dating APP, a creature who will do the impossible to make their paths cross, forever...
Official Selection
The First Night
Director: Gabriel Milessis Braga
After collapsing at the altar, Elise awakens inside an old church, and something inside her has changed. Guided by a mysterious man who seems to understand her condition, she begins to confront a new, terrifying hunger. The First Night is a gothic meditation on becoming, resistance, and the quiet seduction of darkness in our lifes.
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Official Selection
Dead Air
Writer: Eric Gorodetsky
After moving into a new apartment, a grieving woman begins receiving voicemails from herself — but not from her.
Official Selection
Return of the Shah
Writer: David Mulligan
In 1979, the exiled and dying Shah of Iran, armed with the grim foreknowledge of humanity's impending collapse, returns to his homeland to reclaim his throne, unite a fractured Iran, and stop the apocalypse.
Official Selection
The Solution
Directors: John Klein, Steve Kniss
Advanced Mathematics Professor Ruby Finnegan is drowning in obscurity and mediocrity. She needs to publish the paper she’s dedicated the last decade of her life on, but her math isn’t quite working out. When she ropes her T.A. Aiza Tahan into helping her, their relationship begins to fracture and spiral out of control.
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Official Selection
Xpendable
Director: Walter Ernest Haussner
Inspired by Evan Hunter’s (The Birds, High and Low) early short story The Last Spin, Xpendable tells the story of a dispute between two crime organizations and the decision to settle matters with a representative from each “club”. Whereas the original story dealt with juvenile males from rival gangs, Xpendable shifts the focus to age and gender, along with a dose of black humor. Filmed in Medford and Jacksonville, Oregon, over four days during 2022 and featuring actors Preston Mead, Annette MacGregor, Adam Lewis, Jeffrey Hunter, and Johnny Whelchel, along with a production crew consisting of family and friends, Xpendable is director/producer Walter Haussner’s love letter to Film Noir and David Mamet’s view that “Old age and treachery will always beat youth and exuberance”.
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Official Selection
Dead Copy
Director: Jason Warriner
A struggling author, annoyed by a neighbor and hounded by her agent, finds a mysterious tape player that inspires her writing—but at what cost as all hell breaks out?!
Official Selection
HAG
Director: Brooke deRosa
Betrayal awakens something ancient. When a girl discovers her best friend’s affair, she turns to a folktale for revenge—and becomes the monster herself.
Official Selection
Neustadt by Night
Director: Alexander Krahl
A washed-up private eye takes on a missing-person case that plunges him through the chaotic nightlife of Dresden's Neustadt—into absurdity, madness, and a truth stranger than fiction.
Official Selection
Southern Rites
Writer: Christopher Brian Dorsey
A young man unwittingly becomes part of century old blood oath between a matrilineal family of witches and a dark entity
Official Selection
Hunger Feature Film
Writer: Brian Dorsey
A group of trappers lost in the wilderness of the 1840s Pacific Northwest must face more than the elements to survive.
Official Selection
Don’t Look In The Dark
Director: Samuel Freeman
When a couple's phones begin recording on their own during a camping trip, what they capture isn't just darkness. It's something that wants to be seen. 🔥 “A groundbreaking found footage film that people will be talking about for decades to come.” — Adrian Țofei (Be My Cat) 🏆 Winner – Most Innovative Film, Unnamed FootageFestival 2026 🏆 Winner – Best Feature, Birmingham Horror Film Festival 2025 🏆 Winner - Best Horror Film, Wallachia International Film Festival 2025 🎬 Official Selection – New Jersey Film Festival 2026 🎬 Official Selection – New York CineFest 2026 🎬 Official Selection – Toronto Indie Horror Film Festival 2026 🎬 Official Selection – GASP! Horror Film Festival 2026 🎬 Official Selection – Unnamed Footage Festival 2026
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Official Selection
Reverb
Director: Michael McCallum
A man can be unmade in a single night. Tony is chased by a love song he can't seem to escape, a cruelly ironic reminder of a terrible mistake and a worse choice. He races his '66 Riviera down empty streets, its engine growling like a beast, its one good headlight barely shepherding him through the night. He flees from bar to bar, desperate to drink away his guilt, to find his wife, and to outrun his past.
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Official Selection
Off-Key
Director: Michael McCallum
A down and out trombone player finds himself at a crossroads with his career and life in a dark, wet alley at night.
Official Selection
Top Hate
Director: Michael Thomas Cain
Fred Astoria (Tut Gregory), a beloved Hollywood star and dancer, is receiving bizarre death threats in the noirish comedy TOP HATE -- and all of his celebrity colleagues are suspects. These include his former dance partner Ginseng Roget (Kellyrose Marry), archrival Keane Shelley (Mark Ashin), stalking comedienne Katherine Heartburn (Emma Denson) and simpering British butler Simcox (Ed Altman). While dodging multiple murder attempts, Astoria first seeks advice from his close friends Carmen Miranda-Wright (Jasmine Dorothy Haefner) and Oscar Le Vile (Mark Parsia), then consults with private investigator Tyree Fingerlake (Xander Jackson), before finally visiting Janey Stompanelli (Sean Young), the mob’s top enforcer in the City of Angels. Presented in black and white and set during the Golden Age of Hollywood, TOP HATE is written and produced by Joe Queenan (columnist at THE WALL STREET JOURNAL and author of 12 books including RED LOBSTER, WHITE TRASH AND THE BLUE LAGOON and IF YOU'RE TALKING TO ME, YOUR CAREER MUST BE IN TROUBLE) and directed by Michael Thomas Cain (writer and director of “Eliminated” and “Not Approved For Cancer Treatment”). It features a lush original score by Kinny Landrum, the Emmy-nominated composer, arranger and keyboard player whose talents are on full display in David Lynch’s TWIN PEAKS, TWIN PEAKS: FIRE WALK WITH ME and WILD AT HEART). To top all that, TOP HATE stars the legendary Sean Young (BLADE RUNNER, NO WAY OUT, and DUNE).
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Official Selection
STACKED
Director: Mike Quain
Set against the backdrop of an ordinary day, this short film follows a woman whose casual hike takes an unsettling turn when she discovers a peculiar rock. Drawn to its quiet power, she brings it home, unaware that its presence begins to ripple through the fabric of her seemingly normal life. As the afternoon unfolds, subtle vibrations and mounting tension blur the line between the familiar and the unknown, pulling the story into a chilling spiral.
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Official Selection
Bloody Sunday
Writer: Angela Thorne
The reality distortion of FIGHT CLUB meets the shadowy foreboding of REBECCA when a hallucinating Senator’s daughter, isolated and exiled to the home where her sister died, must cling to sanity as her image-obsessed mother drives her toward madness—and a killer closes in.
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Official Selection
Always and Forever
Director: Johnny Thames
An obsessive, controlling teenager kidnaps her boyfriend to play a bizarre, self destructive game. But things become complicated when the boy demands a stop. The film comments on how trauma if not confronted and resolved will lead to co-dependent and potentially destructive results, while providing enough empathy toward accountability.
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Official Selection
JUST ANOTHER DAY
Director: John Borowski
An ordinary day in the life of a Senior woman named Harriet -- with a little dark comedy suspense twist! A fitting commentary on both the pharmaceutical industry & women in unfulfilled life-long marriages.
Official Selection
Under Contract
Writer: Arthur Ericsson
Participation in this study constitutes acceptance of all terms and conditions, with payment rendered only upon successful completion; no liability is assumed for adverse outcomes.
Official Selection
The Haunted Saxophone
Directors: Ron Campbell, Katarina Fink
Warning: this animated short contains poetry, jazz and multiple fatalities. THE HAUNTED SAXOPHONE. Propped up in the window of a pawn shop is an old tenor saxophone. Little is known of its history (and mystery) until now... A cautionary tale told by an unreliable narrator. THE HAUNTED SAXOPHONE is drawn, written and performed by Ron Campbell with videography and animation by Katarina Fink.
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Official Selection
Past Presence
Writer: Kevin Mongelli
Dr. Stephen Emerson, a psychology professor haunted by the past, wrestles with questions about consciousness and the origins of human wisdom. The story opens as Emerson delivers lectures about inherited knowledge, observed by his perceptive students, notably Jake and Alicia. Meanwhile, we meet Edgar, an eccentric inventor driven by an obsession: to unlock secrets of consciousness and past lives using a machine he calls The Dnalym. In the past, college friends Edgar, Davis, Suzanne, and Julio conduct risky experiments with Edgar's device, enlisting vulnerable subjects in hopes of triggering visions of prior lifetimes. Their tests set off traumatic memories and unexplained phenomena, raising questions about the line between science and the supernatural. Dr. Emerson’s own life spirals as his emotionally distant marriage to Meghan falters, with both seeking meaning through volunteerism, academic pursuit, and strained connection. Jake, struggling with unresolved childhood trauma from a family tragedy, becomes increasingly drawn to Emerson’s philosophies. Alicia finds herself forced to face the pain underlying her own optimistic exterior. As time blurs, characters are drawn together through conferences, shared confidences, and intense personal revelations. Through therapy, hypnosis, and Edgar’s continued experiments, suppressed memories surface—some claiming glimpses of other eras and lives. These discoveries push them toward emotional truths about grief, destiny, and the possibility of karmic consequences that transcend a single existence. The story crescendos as scientific boundaries collapse into the mystical. Emerson, on the verge of despair, must decide if confronting hidden trauma and the weight of past actions can ever bring true healing, or if some mysteries are better left undiscovered. The film ends with its characters transformed by their search for identity and meaning—leaving the audience to contemplate whether the past lives within us all.
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Official Selection
Schisma
Writer: Cameron A. Straughan
Logline In a rigid theocratic future, a gender non-conforming astronaut leads a fractured crew to investigate a mysterious deep-space anomaly that manifests their fears and grotesquely mutates them, forcing humanity toward a terrifying new stage of evolution. Tone Solaris meets Event Horizon. Synopsis In a militaristic theocracy, a deep-space anomaly begins emitting strange signals. Military officials assemble the crew of the Nova II based on psychological profiles, sending them on a year-long mission to investigate. Their leader is Casey Adler, an independent, gender non-conforming astronaut. Among the crew are a zealot priest haunted by his past, a volatile mechanic masking deep insecurities, a disabled technician burdened by guilt, and two psychologists secretly observing the crew for an unseen authority. When the Nova II encounters the anomaly, waves of alien energy surround the ship. The crew suffers headaches, hallucinations, and violent psychological breakdowns as their deepest fears begin to manifest. As paranoia and violence spread, the psychologists realize the mission was never meant to save the crew — only to gather data. When Adler ventures alone into the anomaly, they return transformed. Reality fractures. Bodies mutate. Identities merge. The anomaly begins reshaping the crew into something new. Humanity is evolving. Whether it wants to or not. Awards & Recognition • Nominee - Best Writing – Feature Script, HorrorHound Weekend Film Festival (Spring 2026) • Finalist – The Dark Fest (2026) • Finalist – 13Horror.com Screenplay Contest (2026) • Finalist – Oregon Screams Horror Film Festival (Winter 2026) • Finalist – The Dunwich Horror Fest (2025) • Semi-Finalist - A Night of Horror International Film Festival (2026) • Semi-Finalist - MidWest WeirdFest (2026) • Semi-Finalist - Filmmatic Horror Screenplay Awards (2026) • Nominee - International Indie Film & Screenplay Festival (2026) • Quarterfinalist - Atlanta Film Festival Screenplay Competition (2026) • Quarterfinalist – Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards: Diversity XIII (2026) • Quarterfinalist – Emerging Screenwriters Screenplay Competition (2026) • Official Selection – Horror Screenings Film Festival Bloody Mirror (2026) • Official Selection — The Dark Fest (2026) • Official Selection — Philip K. Dick Science Fiction & Supernatural Film Festival (2026) • Official Selection – Los Angeles Fantasy Fest (2025) • Official Selection – Blockbuster Screenwriting Contest (2025) • Ranked 5th out of 134 submissions at Oregon Screams Horror Film Festival (Score: 90/100) • Ranked #2 out of 109 submissions at Austin After Dark Film Festival (Score: 90/100) Selected Praise “The script has a strong visual style and a bold voice.” — Austin After Dark Film Festival Judge “Bold images like the pulsating anomaly and the body horror of the pineal gland felt disturbing and fresh.” — Austin After Dark Film Festival Judge “Smart thought experiment about identity, consciousness, and manipulation by institutions.” — Oregon Screams Horror Film Festival Judge “Body horror with a clear thematic spine, not just gross-out for the sake of it. A grim, stylish space parable where identity fractures, faith curdles, and evolution shows up like a crime scene photographer.” — 13Horror.com Film & Screenplay Contest “Ambitious concept, deep philosophical themes, and excellent world-building.” — Bloody Mirror Film Festival Schisma received an 8.4 average reader score from three reviewers at the Bloody Mirror Film Festival, praised for its “ambitious cosmic scope and fearless exploration of human metamorphosis.”
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Official Selection
At the Mercy of Faith
Writer: Samuel Taylor
When a devout young preacher's faith is shattered by a traumatic childhood tragedy, his attempts to rebuild his life as an adult are upended by haunting visions, supernatural warnings, and the reemergence of unresolved guilt, forcing him to confront the demons of his past... before they destroy his family.
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Official Selection
It’s Not an Eating Disorder
Director: Johnny Brindle
Zee clashes with the prison mandated therapist over her "diagnosis", her rights, and her very existence.