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2026 Screamfest Nola Film Guide

2026 Films

Screamfest Nola Film Guide

Film Category

Apocalypse Z: New World

Meet the Filmmaker

Carles Torrens

Director
Synopsis
The story takes us to the Canary Islands, which have become Europe’s last refuge following the outbreak of the TSJ virus. When a special mission sets out for the mainland in search of vital supplies, Roberto joins the team with questionable intentions. The dangerous operation turns into a desperate race for survival, and Roberto and his companions find themselves caught between hordes of infected and divided loyalties. Then the timeless question arises: save yourself, or risk everything to preserve what little humanity remains?
Film Category

AYA

Meet the Filmmaker

Maxii Ayala

Director/Writer/Producer/Editor
Synopsis
AYA is a psychological sci-fi horror about a woman who awakens in a sterile white room under the control of an unseen Supervisor. Through a series of escalating experiments, Aya’s humanity, resilience, and identity are tested, leading her toward a devastating discovery about the truth of her past and the cruelty hidden beneath the guise of science.
Film Category

CopyPaste!

Meet the Filmmaker

Keira Schehl

Director
Synopsis
When a glitch overtakes the dress-up game, “Copy Paste”, its main character, Dolly, disappears. Molly, her sidekick, must survive the destabilized world as it forces her to take Dolly’s role. Pressured by her warping reality and the game’s player, Molly must decide who she is; or who she must become.
Film Category

The Creek

Meet the Filmmaker

Jimmi Fenton

Writer / Director
Synopsis
A lone prospector hunts for gold in the remote bushland of 1850's Australia when an immigrant suspiciously happens on his location.
Film Category

Dawn

Meet the Filmmaker

Violet Dempsey

Director
Synopsis
A vampire stuck in her 16-year-old body seeks to reconnect with her human past via her ex-high-school sweetheart, only to discover he is the real monster.
Film Category

Dead Air

Meet the Filmmaker

Julien Bisnaire-Wakeham

Writer/ Director
Synopsis
In 1979, Eddie Ray, a washed-up small-town radio host, clinging to his midnight slot, entertains listeners during his segment “Midnight Confessions”. The first caller is a pathetic and troubled gambler seeking advice. Eddie mocks him, revealing his own true character. However, the next caller is a terrified young woman, claiming that she can hear an intruder in her house. Eddie simply dismisses her as a prankster, but keeps her on the line so as to pretend he is interested in helping her. Suddenly the womans scream cuts off the line. Shaken, Eddie tries to regain control of the situation by discounting her scream as part of the drama that comes along with being a woman. Then, the phone rings, this time it’s a man with a chilling confession: he has just killed a girl.

As the caller toys with him, Eddie begins to question his safety within the radio station. The sound of crashing, footsteps, and whispers all suggest the threat is no longer confined to the phone line. The once-safe broadcasting booth then becomes a claustrophobic trap, and Eddie and his broadcast are silenced forever when the caller’s voice merges with physical presence. Dead Air is an atmospheric horror/thriller that explores self-preservation, voyeurism, and ending eras through the intimacy of live radio.
Film Category

Dead Dawn

Meet the Filmmaker

Aaron Jay Rome

Writer / Director
Synopsis
Anna-Beth is the small-town post office clerk everyone overlooks. She can't say no to a bad customer, a worse boss,or the ex who won't let go. Then something dark arrives with the dawn, and the woman nobody saw coming finds out exactly what she's capable of.
A pitch-black comedy and a small-town true-crime story with a cult anti-hero at its center.
Film Category

Donor

Meet the Filmmaker

Jennifer Saura

Writer/Director
Synopsis
After volunteering to be the egg donor for her now-pregnant friend, a woman grows to regret her choice in the aftermath of her own miscarriage—and considers taking back the only baby she has left.
Film Category

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer 4K Restoration

Meet the Filmmaker

John McNaughton

Writer / Director
Synopsis
Arriving in Chicago, Henry moves in with ex-con acquaintance Otis and starts schooling him in the ways of the serial killer.
Film Category

Hivemind Deluxe

Meet the Filmmaker

Chris Alan Evans

Writer/Director
Synopsis
A short sci-fi satire about a disillusioned woman longing for community; who must suddenly resist an alien-led hivemind that promises belonging, at the cost of her soul.
Film Category

Human

Meet the Filmmaker

Matt Stuertz

Writer/Director
Synopsis
It's past midnight and Dani Ferris is a woman all alone, away from home. A woman who's tired as hell, wanting nothing but a little tease of digital debauchery before shutting her eyes. A woman not even remotely prepared for the roller coaster of emotions she's about to ride with a front-row seat. Sleep? Lol. Nope. Tonight is a night for friends, lovers, enemies, frenemies?, little guns, bigger guns, body parts, body fluids, body solids, love, hate, life, death, and things a hell of a lot more super than natural. A night Dani will never forget. And neither will he.
Film Category

Idle Hands

Meet the Filmmaker

Ellie Roberts

Director
Synopsis
When Mort—the brains behind Hell's torture—hears the pain he causes, he questions his purpose, but is soon presented with an unrefusable offer.
Film Category

Muffled

Meet the Filmmaker

Stephen McNamee

Director
Synopsis
Years after their childhood friend Greta vanished without a trace, true crime enthusiasts, Nora and Harper, return to their hometown to solve the mystery. Armed with cameras, microphones, and possibly misguided gumption, they set out to uncover the truth. Their documentary project soon uncovers disturbing ties to sinister creepypastas and rumored occult rituals. As their investigation spirals into the dark corners of the internet, uncanny phenomena begin to blur the lines between reality and the supernatural.
Film Category

New Rules

Meet the Filmmaker

W. Boyd Ford

Writer/Director
Synopsis
Two men arrive in a quiet suburban neighborhood with an unusual order from their boss. One is calm. The other is very much not. As they sit outside an ordinary house arguing over nerves, protocol, and a mysterious set of “new rules,” it becomes increasingly unclear what they’ve been sent there to do, whether they’re actually going to do it, or why the old rules suddenly weren’t good enough. A darkly comic descent into something much stranger than it first appears.
Film Category

The Night Driver

Meet the Filmmaker

JEREMY WEISS

DIRECTOR
Synopsis
One night in the middle of the country, traveling salesman Hurdis Matheson drives down a dark stretch of highway when he accidently hits a longhaired stranger. The stranger survives, but is badly wounded. Hurdis agrees to drive him to the hospital. As they drive, he realizes something is wrong with his passenger. Before he knows it, The Stranger becomes violent and attacks him. A couple of days later in California, Hurdis’ wife Cheryl Jones begs for her old friend Detective Hank Granger to help find her husband. She hasn’t heard from him in two days, and suspects something happened to him. Granger agrees to help but becomes entangled in a bigger case with the FBI regarding Hurdis Jones. They suspect he is a serial killer on a rampage, leaving a trail of homicide scenes across the country. Meanwhile, Hurdis is running, driving and speeding to get home. But everywhere he turns, The Stranger stalks him. He can’t seem to lose him. What will happen next will lead to a climax that will leave audiences speechless. Reminiscent of films such as High Tension or The Sixth Sense, The Night Driver swerves with twists and turns that deliver shocking surprises that no one can anticipate.
Film Category

No Volveré

Meet the Filmmaker

Jan Bross

Director, Writer, Producer, Editor
Synopsis
A lonely ventriloquist is served divorce papers at the showroom bar where he works. Things take a strange turn when he tries to remedy the situation with his puppet, Luis.
Film Category

POLY

Meet the Filmmaker

Mac Taylor

Director, Writer, Producer, Editor
Synopsis
Four friends head into the woods for a weekend retreat, hoping to reconnect and work through their tangled relationships. But their personal issues soon become the least of their problems when they encounter a presence in the forest that doesn’t just want to harm them — it wants to change who they are. An existential thriller in the tradition of The Twilight Zone, blending psychological horror and intimate drama to explore transformation, desire, and identity.
Film Category

Pyre

Meet the Filmmaker

Dylan Miller

Writer/Director
Synopsis
In a remote 17th-century village, a widowed mother accused of witchcraft is interrogated by a charming but ruthless inquisitor, forcing an impossible choice to save her daughter.
Film Category

THE REVIEW

Meet the Filmmaker

Samuel Gonzalez Jr.

Writer / Director
Synopsis
Desperate to rebuild her career, a disgraced food critic stumbles upon a strange new pizza place in need of a review. What seems like the perfect opportunity for a comeback soon twists into a grotesque nightmare, forcing her to discover that every star matters—and every word comes with deadly consequences.
Film Category

Silt

Meet the Filmmaker

Aaron Jay Rome

Writer / Director
Synopsis
A lakeside retreat, a fractured group of friends, and a weekend that was supposed to fix everything. Their host, played by Tommy Wiseau, claims the water carries "the genes of the Gods." Old wounds have a way of surfacing, and whatever is living under that water knows exactly where to find them.
Film Category

Survivors:Loss

Meet the Filmmaker

Daniel Joshua Waghorne

Writer/ Director
Synopsis
A man takes a moment to reflect on happier times.
Film Category

Tailor Made

Meet the Filmmaker

Omkar Mohare

Director
Synopsis
Elliot, overwhelmed by guilt after the accidental death of his wife during a violent argument, isolates
himself in a decaying apartment that preserves every trace of his crime. On the edge of ending his life, he
finds a strange newspaper ad promising total disappearance through a man known as The Tailor.
The tailor doesn’t alter clothes, but identities. He offers Elliot a catalog of “skins,” each belonging to a
different man. Elliot undergoes a brutal transformation; his face is no longer his own, and for the first time, he feels free.
But when a stranger recognizes Elliot’s borrowed face as someone who committed a terrible crime,
Elliot is forced to confront a horrifying truth: escaping his past may have bound him to someone else’s.
Film Category

Trick 'r' Treat - w/ 4K Restoration of Season's Greetings

Meet the Filmmaker

Michael Dougherty

Director
Synopsis
It is said that Halloween is the night when the dead rise to walk among us and other unspeakable things roam free. The rituals of All Hallows Eve were devised to protect us from their evil, and one small town is about to be taught a terrifying lesson that some traditions are best not forgotten. Nothing is what it seems when a young couple learns the dangers of blowing out a Jack-o-Lantern before midnight; four beautiful women cross paths with a costumed stalker; a group of pranksters discovers the horrifying truth buried in a local legend; and a cantankerous hermit is visited by a strange trick-or-treater with a few bones to pick. Costumes and candy, ghouls and goblins, monsters and mayhem... the tricks and treats of Halloween turn deadly as strange creatures of every variety-- human and otherwise --try to survive the scariest night of the year.
Film Category

Watchman's Woods

Meet the Filmmaker

Maddy Geauthreaux

Writer/Director
Synopsis
Best friends Nat and Vicky head into the woods in the hopes of getting the local monster on video.
Articles

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