Nightmares Film Festival 2026 Reviews: Nine Films Worth the Fright

Nightmares Film Festival 2026 puts nine new indie horror features on the table, reviewed by Brandon Thomas, Hope Madden, Daniel Baldwin and George Wolf. The spread is wide: a grindhouse spoof about adult film-makers, a supernatural storm around a Pacific control tower, a stalled lift full of strangers, two found footage mysteries and a ventriloquist dummy nobody wants to meet. None of the nine scores below three and a half stars, and seven of them land at four. Each film gets its own card with the essentials, and the whole set joins the rest of our horror movie reviews on Ginger Nuts of Horror. Here is what the team found.

Single locations, tiny casts and old school grit run right through Nightmares 2026. Not every film reinvents its corner of horror, and a couple tread familiar ground, but the best of them turn those limits into weapons, from one woman alone in a storm-lashed control tower to a ventriloquist dummy in a 1970s living room.

Friday the 69th

With a novel approach to a movie-within-a-movie, Friday the 69th scares up plenty of laughs with this comedic slasher.

A couple of down-on-their-luck adult filmmakers attempt to jump on the profitable slasher bandwagon by using their already established cast and crew. As they work their way through the first table read of the script, the filmmakers slowly realize that they might be in over their heads. 

Mimicry of the 70s & 80s film aesthetic reached a fever pitch after the release of Grindhouse in 2007. Although the film wasn’t a massive success, horror fans and filmmakers alike latched onto the deliberately beat-up look that defined so many exploitation horror flicks. While those original films had this look because of age, poor projection, and limited budgets, many homage films deliberately aimed for it, but they didn’t always hit the mark. 

Friday the 69th is one of those films that successfully manages to match that vintage aesthetic while also having a personality of its own. As someone who’s watched a lot of those early grindhouse-era films, Friday the 69th has all of the hallmarks: scratches and dirt, missing reels, overlit scenes, and very questionable acting.

Many of the jokes within Friday the 69th require a certain understanding of the horror genre, but the film doesn’t feel the need to constantly go “Get it?! Get it?!” You either get the joke, or you don’t. The jokes come so furiously that you’re liable to miss at least a handful each scene. And they’re good jokes too! Writer/Director Alex Montilla’s knack for infusing humor with his love and knowledge of horror cinema is on full display.

Despite covering a lot of the same well-trodden cinematic ground, Friday the 69th still offers up 91 minutes of solid gags and laughs.

3 1/2 stars out of 5

The Curse of Tahu’a

Thanks to a script full of surprises and one very committed performance, Benjamin Busnel’s The Curse of Tahu’a provides gripping, unpredictable thrills.

Moea (Marie Kauffmann) works in an air traffic control tower on a small Pacific island. The little airport is closing due to a massive incoming tropical storm, but before Moea can lock up, she gets a distress signal. A tiny plane that should not have been allowed to take off from a neighboring island is now in danger and the pilot needs Moea to help her land.

Kauffman gets two opportunities—two scenes—to act alongside other flesh-and-blood performers. The rest of the film’s 90 minutes, she spends alone in that glassed-in tower talking on the radio or a phone. That’s a tall order for an actor, but Kauffman impresses.

Moea is not your standard heroine, and neither Kauffmann nor Busnel go out of their way to warm you to her. She’s unpleasant, disliked, a bit harried, and deeply damaged, all of which Kauffmann—thanks in large part to a clever script light on exposition—conveys authentically.

Scripting with Myriam Dupuis, Busnel leads you to believe that you know where things are going early with the distressed airplane, but then he zigs when you expect a zag and suddenly things get supernatural.

It’s again mainly due to Kauffmann that the turn works without feeling silly. She navigates a script that upends one common trope or genre cliché after another to deliver a tense nightmare.

This is efficiency in filmmaking: barely more than a single set, barely more than one face on the screen, streamlined storytelling, effective sound and set design, and anxiety that increases with the storm. Busnel’s feature debut announces him as a filmmaker worth seeking out.

Grade: A-4 stars out of 5

American Dollhouse

Most slasher movies these days tend to harken back to either the “unstoppable killer” fare of the late ’80s popularized by Freddy and Jason or they set their sights on attempting to be the next Scream-style meta-slasher. While there’s nothing wrong with either pathway, it is nice when we are occasionally still handed one that falls more in line with the subgenre’s earlier efforts from the late ’70s and early ’80s.

John Valley’s American Dollhouse is such a film. There may be some DNA from the other two aforementioned classes of slasher present here, but this is way more a maniac psychodrama than it is a masked killer riff.

There is no mystery as to who is bringing the violence to suburbia here. Kelsey Pribilski’s Sandy is creepy terror on two legs and she makes an absolute meal out of her viciously weird villain.

Sandy inhabits a world that resides between the psycho slashers of old – think The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and When a Stranger Calls – and the modern horror masters of today. There are also shades of Hereditary and Weapons here, as well as some visual stylings akin to the work of Oz Perkins. The cinematography is just as standout an element as Pribilski’s performance, making American Dollhouse even more of a must-see for horror fans.

This is one to watch out for, folks.

3 1/2 stars out of 5

Liv’s Last Ride

A secluded cabin in the woods is a benchmark in the horror genre. From The Evil Dead to Cabin Fever and The Cabin in the Woods, few settings offer such a surprisingly rich canvas for horror filmmakers. Liv’s Last Ride might not find itself in the upper echelon of cabin-based fright flicks, but it makes a strong case to be in the conversation.

After renting a cabin to celebrate the upcoming marriage of the titular Liv (Sutter Nolan), a group of friends finds themselves wrestling with old resentments, bargain-basement strippers, and some very unwelcome masked party crashers. As the bodies stack up, so do the questions behind the killers’ motivations. 

Liv’s Last Ride is the kind of film I’d call a “kitchen sink” movie. Namely, there’s something in it for everyone. The acting is top-notch. The cinematography looks like it belongs in a movie from a studio. The characters are interesting and well cast. And maybe most importantly: the movie doesn’t skimp on the kills. Director Thaddeus Armstrong (who also acts in the film!) has crafted a crowd-pleaser that manages to check a lot of boxes while not feeling like it’s trying to check boxes. 

The cast deserves special notice as so much of the film involves them bouncing off one another in a single setting. It’s an especially talky film, but enjoyably so given how much of the humor is character based and comes from their interactions. The black humor in Liv’s Last Ride isn’t necessarily from the violence, but more so from how easily—and without much thought—these characters drag each other down or end up turning on one another. 

Liv’s Last Ride is the kind of fun horror comedy that could easily become a sleepover classic. Even with the darkness at the film’s periphery, that ornery sense of fun stays front and center for the entire running time. 

What I Remember

Equal parts mystery, found footage thriller and exploration of queer identity, writer director Alex Hera’s impressive first feature What I Remember casts a truly hypnotic spell .

Ryan (Cabe Thompson) and Sam (Alexandra Boulas) have a fateful meeting one afternoon in the woods around their small town of Brookhaven. Ryan is constantly recording a video diary, and we see his POV as he stumbles upon Sam and her friend Drew (Taylor Morris) having a heated argument.

After breaking free of Drew, Ryan and Sam walk the trails together, sparking a tender and empathetic friendship that builds to something deeper, one that anchors Hera’s tale of shifting timelines, awakening identities and persistence of memory.

Ryan and Sam hatched a plan to leave town together, but Ryan’s disappearance left Sam grasping for answers. As Hera employs a data-moshing technique to blur the edges of time, place and vlog footage, another mystery from the past comes to light. The whereabouts of Hayden, a long-missing local gay man, have never been uncovered, sparking unmistakable questions about local threats to those in the queer community.

Boulas is terrific in a performance that only improves as the emotions of the narrative deepen. Hera mines those feelings with great care, leaving What I Remember as a collective of sketches that build to a mysterious meditation on finding the people and places that allow you to find yourself.

Flytrapper

Forty-five seconds into director Drew Britton’s Flytrapper and I was hooked. Co-writer/co-star Georgia Lee King cuts the most fascinating figure as Crystal, a psychopath who is defiantly, delightfully, dorkishly certain of herself.

Crystal’s days of marauding and cutting sick rap beats are interrupted by an unannounced visit from her BFF, Melonie (Leah Piescinski).

Britton’s approach is naturalistic. Nothing feels staged, takes linger, and a very lived-in relationship emerges between the two leads. But this is not your average scary movie. Flytrapper is like if Ken Loach made Napoleon Dynamite as a grisly, female led horror.

The humor is so natural and delightful that the sudden bursts of violence really startle. King’s performance is ferocious and funny with surprising depth and vulnerability. Piescinski’s quiet turn never steals the spotlight, but offers something authentic and tender. The pair’s chemistry and delivery are the secrets to the levity.

You never feel as if Flytrapper is mocking these two characters in the way that other films centered on social misfits sometimes do. King and Piescinski understand Crystal and Malonie so well that, while you can never predict where the story is leading, the surprises land as natural—albeit misguided—choices they would make.

The movie looks great, too. Set in a small, lakeside town with no air conditioning in a sweaty summer, Flytrapper immerses you in an environment that suits its tale. You feel dropped into a town where most shops are still cash only, where WIFI is hard to come by and the surveillance state is still miles and miles away.

It’s a gorgeous, low-fi environment where friendship, murder, and musical creativity flourish. But Britton does lean into absurdity now and again with gloriously weird dream sequences.

It’s an odd combination, but it works wonderfully to deliver a genuinely unique cinematic experience.

4 stars out of 5

Dead Drop

You like your thrillers with a good dose of blood splatter? Maybe even some deadly puzzle-solving and jabs of dark humor? Well, stand next to me for Dead Drop, a wickedly fun ride on a lethal freight elevator.

One hectic morning inside a large office building, the main elevator seems to be on the fritz. So eight strangers decide the large freight elevator down the hall will speed their busy day along, and they get in.

They push the buttons, the doors close, but the ride is a short one. The elevator stalls, and they are all trapped.

Writer/director Ned Crowley quickly sets an effective sense of people and place, getting us comfortable with the different personalities that will have to work together for a path to safety. The snappy dialog begins to reveal important connections between the “Teacher,” “Bike Messenger,” “Troll,” “Lawyer,” “Actress,” “Suit,” “Priest” and “Bro,” and that maybe this fateful meeting is not as happenstance as it seems.

There are engineering clues to decipher as well, and Crowley (Killing Faith) adopts a wonderfully mischievous tone for his frisky mashup of Cube, Saw, and even a dash of Da Vinci Code. The bloodshed can be sudden, and shocking, with Crowley making sure it all pops in the frame for maximum WTF? appeal.

The ensemble cast is locked in to the vibe that’s driven home by a couple well-played needle drops. And by the time the other narrative shoe drops as well, you’ll most likely be smiling at how skillfully Dead Drop pushes your buttons.

4 stars out of 5

When You See It

Found footage is a tricky subgenre. Its very appeal – the gimmick of being shown first-hand footage of some sort of horrifying incident – can also be its prison. One is bound tightly by the format. Deviating from it too much can break an audience’s suspension of disbelief. On the other hand, if one doesn’t deviate enough, their film won’t stand out from an ever-increasing pool of titles.

When You See It manages to deftly walk that line, delivering an increasingly tense experience akin to the subgenres titans, The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity. While it does opt for the stock “paranormal investigators actually may have finally encountered the paranormal” narrative that most films of this type have these days, it does do it better than most.  

Without giving anything away, director John Abbott’s When You See It manages to play around in that sandbox in some interesting ways. This is aided in a major way by the performances, which are a lot more natural than in most similar films. The editing is also on point, ratcheting up the tension at a steady pace from start to finish.

Found footage fans will find a lot to love here. If this is your subgenre of choice, you’re going to want to seek it out, be it on the festival circuit or when it arrives in wider release on down the road. Those with an aversion to the subgenre are unlikely to be converted, but if you’re open to this kind of tale, When You See It will deliver the goods.

4 stars out of 5

Death Came Knocking

A slow build, a single location, and 16mm camerawork combine to craft an intense, uncomfortable throwback horror in writer/director Eric Yoder’s Death Came Knocking.

The film opens with hard drinking, tough talking Aunt Carolyn (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2’s Caroline Williams) stopping by her sister’s old house to pick up the car. The LA house is being demolished in favor of a new mall, and while cousins Julie (Jacqueline Barone) and Aaron (Mario Silva) pack up, Aunt Carolyn will drive the car cross country to her sister’s new home.

It’s an organic way to deliver backstory, and then we’re alone with the two young adults who do a little packing and a bit of dancing while they snap Polaroids and smoke indoors (because it’s the 1970s, and that happened then).

Then the doorbell rings. Aaron wisely sends the man at the door away, but Julie lets him in because women in 1970s movies always do the dumbest things. But Yoder makes the most of his aesthetic, drawing clear comparisons to the Savage Cinema of American 1970s independent horror, most explicitly, Wes Craven’s Last House on the Left.

Slowly, Yoder tightens tensions as the film moves from a horror of manners toward a home invasion flick. First, it’s Daniel (Rey Marz), then his pregnant wife Marlene (Bix Krieger), and soon enough, Daniel opens his case, and we meet Jasper, the ventriloquist dummy.

And nobody wants that.

Marz delivers an expert performance, aw-shucks good guy one minute, amused sadist the next. The period aesthetic and practical effects help the film overcome some plotting and pacing issues, and the unapologetic violence certainly shocks, but also feels fitting in a film so entirely influenced by Seventies horror.

4 stars out of 5