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To tweak Hugh Grant’s best line in “Love Actually,” horror actually is all around.

Whether you’re riding into the new year on your high horse or calmly preparing to walk into the sea, 2025 is a turning point. There’s no genre that tells us who we are or what we’re made of like this one, and the past twelve months have offered audiences a slew of scary stories full of shocks and surprises that were mostly open to interpretation.

Not all of us found powerful metaphors for social change in popular titles, and plenty of terrifying efforts flew under the radar in the genre’s generally high-grossing landscape. There were enough abortion analogies released last spring to merit their own ranking And there’s a reason “MaXXXine” — the definitive film of Brat Girl Summer! — didn’t make many year-end lists. Fittingly, the Mia Goth-starring sequel is...

The Mubi streaming platform put itself on the map in a big way with horror fans with the recent premiere of Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance, and now a buzzy horror short is headed to the service in the coming days. It’s titled Dream Creep, and you can watch the trailer below.

From writer/director Carlos A.F. Lopez, Dream Creep originally premiered at Sundance this year, and Indiewire lets us know that it’s coming exclusively to Mubi on December 1.

Rave reviews have hailed the short as “the scariest short on the festival circuit” (Indiewire) and “one of the best bloody horror movies I’ve seen in a long time” (Hope for Film).

Indiewire previews, “Clocking in at just 12 minutes and 34 seconds, the dazzling genre snippet stars Sidney Jayne Hunt and Ian Edlund as spouses stuck in a reverse Nightmare on Elm Street.” What’s the short horror film about,...

They say film festivals are meant to put some leaves on your poster, but “Dream Creep” is the only Oscar-qualifying short still proudly promoting that it made an audience member throw up.

Written and directed by Carlos A.F. Lopez, this buzzy short horror film debuted at Sundance 2024 before it was selected as one of seven titles in the festival’s theatrical tour. Clocking in at just 12 minutes and 34 seconds, the dazzling genre snippet stars Sidney Jayne Hunt and Ian Edlund as spouses stuck in a reverse “Nightmare on Elm Street”.

When a voice emanating from inside the sleeping woman’s head instructs her husband Not to wake her — but instead grab a meat thermometer from the kitchen and do something unthinkable to her ear — he’s forced to make a decision that could kill them both. The stomach-churning result starts streaming December 1 on Mubi

“Dream Creep” was selected for more than 65 film festivals,...

As has been the case in previous years, once again the short films of the London Film Festival continue to demonstrate the eclecticism of the festival programmers’ tastes. Despite being the UK’s largest film festival, the team behind this 68th edition of Lff aren’t afraid to have shorts from filmmakers of various backgrounds sitting next to each other. Watching through the programmes on offer, you’ll see student filmmakers next to established directors, horror shorts sitting alongside intimate documentaries, high budgets next to low budgets. It’s just a wonderful mix of films that are clearly put together without any sort of prejudice or preconceived assumptions. Below you’ll find a list of ten short films from the festival this year that we deemed recommendation-worthy but bear in mind the programme is very much worth your time across the board. So, once you’ve finished with this list,...

Diana Naser’s “Amplified,” Adam J. Graves’ “Anuja,” Nina Gantz’s “Wander to Wonder” and Ben Proudfoot’s “The Final Copy of Ilon Specht” have qualified for Academy Awards in the short-film categories by winning the top awards at the 20th annual HollyShorts Film Festival, which took place this week in Hollywood and held its awards ceremony on Sunday night.

HollyShorts is one of about 150 Oscar-qualifying festivals whose top winners automatically become eligible for Oscars in the three shorts categories. It is one of only 15 festivals that qualifies as many as four films for Academy Awards.

“Amplified” won the Best Short Film Grand Prize, the festival’s top award. “Anuja” took the award for live-action short, “Wander to Wonder” for animated short and “The Final Copy of Ilon Specht” for documentary short.

Ben Proudfoot, the director of the last of those films, is the reigning Oscar champ in the Best Documentary Short category,...

Hang onto your ear holes! You can finally add “made someone in the audience puke” to the growing list of accolades recommending “Dream Creep.”

Among the best and buzziest ideas to come out of the festival circuit this year, writer/director Carlos A.F. Lopez’s brilliant horror short — about a couple awakened in the night to “sounds emanating from an unlikely orifice” — debuted at Sundance in January. Since then, it has won Scariest Short at The Overlook Film Festival and snagged the special mention for Worst Nightmare at Palm Springs ShortFest. “Dream Creep” has also screened at South by Southwest and other shorts showcases where its nightmarish reputation as “That ear movie” tends to precede it.

“I’ve had this idea for a long time,” Lopez told IndieWire, describing an epiphany he had while sleeping next to his wife, executive producer Cathy Lopez. “It sprang very organically from me waking...

Brimming with must-see screenings, immersive experiences, special guests, and a tarantula experience that had to be seen (and felt) to be believed, this year's Overlook Film Festival was the biggest one yet, and if you've been following Daily Dead's Instagram and Twitter accounts, then you know we had yet another unforgettable time at the "summer camp for horror fans."

Be sure to keep an eye on Daily Dead for more coverage of Overlook 2024, and in the meantime, the festival revealed their juried and audience winners for features and short films, including Oddity, Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, and The Looming!

Press Release: April 11, 2024 | New Orleans, LA – The Overlook Film Festival announced today the winners of the audience and juried prizes, as well as festival highlights, from the most heavily-attended edition yet of the annual celebration of all things horror.

The feature film Audience Award, voted on by festival attendees,...

The chances of having your short film selected for Sundance Film Festival’s Short Film program is 0.004 percent – which means the lucky 53 short film selections from over 12,000 short film submissions will truly have the new (or added) opportunity to shine. Among the names that stick out, we find Palme d’Or winner Flóra Anna Buda (“27”), Calvin Lee Reeder’s The Procedure producer Carlos A.F. Lopez‘s “Dream Creep” and Malia Ann (daughter of the former U.S president) who was selected for TIFF back in September and will now head over for a Park City premiere to “The Heart.”…...