UFF8 Calendar

If UFF's favorite subgenres—found footage horror, faux documentary, in-world camera—can claim a filmmaker of grandmaster status, that filmmaker is surely Japan's Kōji Shiraishi. We have shown a number of Shiraishi's films over the years, from the one-take trans-dimensional fantasy A Record of Sweet Murder (UFF3) to the delightful lesbian BDSM faux-doc Safe Word (UFF666). The Unnamed Footage Festival is proud to open our eighth edition with a 20th anniversary screening of Noroi: The Curse, one of Shiraishi's finest works.

The film is presented as the final documentary by Masafumi Kobayashi (Jin Muraki), a famous researcher of the paranormal. Kobayashi's investigation tracks several mysterious disappearances, leading him to a village with a long-buried secret. Over its nearly two-hour run time, the film fully convinces as a documentary (and nails the tone and style of Japanese TV news and variety shows), aided by its strong cast. Ultimately, Noroi: The Curse is genuinely terrifying.

*Badge does not apply to this pre-festival screening.

Yes, it's a dumb name. Yes, we love it. Last year we began the tradition of hosting a party before the fest begins in earnest. It gives filmmakers and fans a chance to meet each other, meet the UFF team, have a few free drinks, and get in the mood for UFF. This year, we're celebrating with our friends Nick Toti and Rachel Kempf, whose film It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This has been a massive success, selling out Alamo Drafthouses and pissing off people who can't see it online.

To celebrate, we'll be pouring drinks and presenting The Blair Witch Project in a way you probably haven't seen before. This screening is going to be pure vibes, so don't worry if you're having too much fun socializing. After taking some time to relax, we'll sit down for a secret screening of something from the Blair Witch universe that's never shown before in theaters.

*Badgeholder Only Event

We've joined forces with the #InWorldCamera powerhouse @watchfoundtv and will be presenting a simultaneous release + screening of two new Horror Dadz films at our annual Recalibration Party! Featuring the 2024 Retrospective POWER HOUR.

+ Complimentary Drinks for for all attendees.

When Dream Eater took the grand prize at The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival in Portland, OR, I was as intrigued as I was cautious. Lovecraftian horror is one of our absolute favorite genres here at UFF, but it's also one of the hardest genres to do right. Old Howie P's stories have intrigued us for over a century, largely because his writing is infused with a deep, inescapable, and irrational emotion: Fear. It's easy to misunderstand his work as dry and emotionless due to his shallow, passive characters, but the truth is that the impotence of the archetypical Lovecraftian protagonist is a result of that fear. Why do anything at all in the face of a vast, indifferent, hungry cosmos?

So, about Dream Eater...

Dream Eater does Lovecraftian horror right. With a simple setup: Isolated in the Laurentian mountains, a filmmaker documents her boyfriend's bizarre sleep disorder. But this film is so much more than its simple summary. Directing trio Alex Lee Williams, Jay Drakulic, and Mallory Drumm infuse the film with nonstop dread. Williams and Drumm's central performances are so emotional and so utterly believable that they invoke a layer of fear that even eluded Lovecraft, namely fear of loss of a loved-one, ultimately asking the question: What do you do when someone you love enters a downward spiral that can't be cured?

*Q&A following

It's no secret that this year's UFF is extremely heavy on horror films. So when I saw that What I Remember, the feature film debut from YouTube documentarian Alex Hera, was billed as a drama/mystery, I wasn't sure what to expect and couldn't predict how it might fit into this year's lineup. I was thrilled, however, to find a tight, engaging mystery with a plot that touches on real-world horrors just as terrifying as anything else UFF has to offer.

Based on Hera's short film of the same title, What I Remember follows Ryan and Sam, a pair bound together by loneliness and by their deep desire to escape the bigotry and isolation of their rural hometown. Building on the short, What I Remember might lack explicit scares, but it makes up for it with somber dread. Jumping between past and present, we watch Ryan and Sam's relationship tenderly grow, all-the-while knowing that in the present Ryan has gone missing, may be dead, and that Sam is dead-set on finding the truth. As these characters grow, so do the stakes, and the town central to the story starts to feel like a haunted house, where the film's central duo may be able to leave, but they can never truly escape.

*Q&A following

The Rebrand is likely the best dark comedy I've seen in the last decade. Director Kaye Adelaide (Don't Text Back, MonsterDyke) has crafted a genuinely funny, dark, and toxic look at codependency within a dysfunctional lesbian relationship. For Adelaide's first feature film after releasing two award winning shorts she's proven herself a director to keep a close eye on. In The Rebrand, Adelaide impressively merges social challenges faced by minority sexualities with effective comedy effortlessly, making The Rebrand a perfect mockumentary of influencer culture.

The Rebrand follows eight-months pregnant videographer, Nicole (Naomi Silver-Vezina), who is hired to film a “redemption documentary” by Thistle and Blair (Nancy Webb and Andi E. McQueen), a pair of lesbian lifestyle influencers who have recently been canceled. But, Nicole soon suspects that the couple may have darker ulterior motives in store. The film's perfect balance of camp and horror made me fall in love. It's chaotic, dark, and queer and I will champion this film for years to come.

A young man searches for the body of his sister years after her tragic disappearance.

*Q&A following

Loosely framed as a highschooler's research presentation, Ehrland Hollingsworth's sophomore feature film manages to capture the spirit of outsider art in a way other indie films can only dream of. Comprising CCTV and spycam footage alongside archival footage and titles in comic sans and Windows 95-esque word art, DOOBA DOOBA follows Amna (Amna Vegha), an aspiring singer who babysits to help make ends meet. Unbeknownst to Amna, her ward for the night is the 16-year-old Monroe (Betsy Sligh). What ensues is a cat-and-mouse game with the tension of Creep and an absurdist sensibility of Too Many Cooks.

DOOBA DOOBA is a rare film that shoots for outsider art and hits the mark entirely, despite creators being relatively normal (we hope). Don't let the film's odd assembly of quotes, archival footage, and comic sans titles fool you, DOOBA DOOBA gets dark.

*Q&A following with director and producer

If you're not familiar with Dave Jackson's 2015 slasher film Cat Sick Blues, you're missing out on one of the best, nastiest, and most original slashers of the 21st century. Similarly, Guy's freshman feature, The Sound of Summer, and his lurid array of shorts (such as the… uh… aptly named, 2 Girls 1 Gut) reveal the mononymous director as a master of no-budget gore. More-or-less emerging from their collaboration as hosts of the Show Me Something Wrong podcast, The Unsolved Love Hotel Murder Case Incident is a love letter to Japan's expansive genre of supernatural investigation films.

Drawing inspiration from the likes of Koji Shiraishi, the 25-deep Tokyo Videos of Horror franchise, and countless others, The Unsolved Love Hotel Murder Case Incident has a straightforward plot: Three friends investigate a haunted love hotel and get fucked with by ghosts, but the directing team's talent, attention to detail, and directing duo's excellent ensemble performance with co-star Kuromi Kirishima, makes The Unsolved Love Hotel Murder Case Incident a delight to watch.

A musician recording an album in the woods finds mysterious cassette tapes being left for him. On them, a woman researching an urban legend was being terrorised by a man and his vicious dog.

A mix between Justin Benson / Aaron Moorhead's RESOLUTION and Turner Clay's THE BLACKWELL GHOST, Distort is a beautiful and welcomed return to the woods.

Eddie has a serious problem. He doesn't know what's real. He doesn't know who he is. He doesn't know why he wakes up covered in blood.

Baleful is a hybrid anthology film that brings the UFF 8 theme—“Video Never Lies”—to a chilling reality. As reality unravels for a small community, its members turn to their cameras for the truth… only to discover that some images can't be unseen. From the creator of Canada's #1 horror YouTube channel, Deformed Lunchbox, Baleful also marks the long-awaited return of Kenny vs Spenny's Spencer Rice to the big screen.

Lolcow; (n) A person or group of people laughed at for actions that they take, despite not trying to be funny. They may try to take themselves seriously, but are often "milked" for laughs with or without their knowledge. -Urban Dictionary.

The Dark Lord of Loves Park, MI just received an eviction notice. Thankfully he's got an antagonistic relationship with an internet following that will sometimes pay him to debase himself.

David Dawson (Flesh Games, FAM-ILLI, The Long Weekend) returns to UFF with his exploration of the lolcow phenomenon. Highlighting the complicated relationship they share with other content creators, who often profit financially from “stolen” lolcow content and inspired by real life lolcow, KingCobraJFS, David offers a thoughtful and emotional examination of one of the darkest corners of the internet.

*David Dawson's short FAM-ILLI is also playing

*Q&A following

I think I can safely speak for the entire UFF team when I say that we've been fascinated with the films of Johannes Grenzfurthner since we showed Masking Threshold at UFF666. Grenzfurthner followed Masking Threshold with the fascinating, experimental, and divisive—looking at you, Terrell—followup, Razzenest, at UFF7.

Now, we're proud to share Solvent, the final film in Grenzfurthner's loose trilogy of unconventional horror films. The film follows a group of researchers searching for Nazi artifacts on an abandoned farm, who discover something much more sinister lurking in a mysterious drain pipe. If that sounds bonkers, you're absolutely correct, and it's an absolute blast. While Solvent is, perhaps, the most traditional of the three, it retains Grenzfurthner's signature touch of batshit insanity. This is not one to miss.

At their very core, in-world-camera films are constructed from a blurring of fiction and reality, the pair mixed like concrete as the foundations of familiar cinematic format. It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This takes that foundation and uses it to build a duplex.

A word-of-mouth phenomenon within the found footage community, It Doesn't Get Any Better Than This has been selling out theaters and taking home awards (including the UFF7 Founder's Award) since it debuted in 2024. Those accolades are not without merit; The inclusion of Rachel Kempf and Nick Toti's real-life backstory (and real-life footage) introduces them as the people they really are, and forces the viewer to question the veracity of everything they see unfold, long after things get weird.

Toti and Kempf use their unique (and seemingly tumultuous) past to weave a narrative thread that begins with a quirky couple in small town Missouri buying a run-down duplex and through a drip-feed of disturbing revelations, transforms it into a truly frightening and authentic story of loss, love, and the strange situations life sometimes places us in—sometimes with those we hold the closest. Join us alongside directors Rachel Kempf and Nick Toti for a one-year UFF anniversary screening of the film that's taken the internet by storm and can't be seen at home: with an appearance by the filmmakers for the first time since before their incredibly successful Alamo Drafthouse run!

*Q&A following

After his powerful directorial debut with Grieve, Robbie Smith returns with I Don't Like it Here, a poignant hybrid found-footage film that builds on the eerie, voyeuristic camera work of Grieve and combines it with segments of faux-documentary footage in order to create something deeply haunting and highly original. I Don't Like it Here follows a parolee who returns to his childhood home to find his family missing and himself a pariah.

While I Don't Like It Here is a hybrid film—That is, not exclusively found footage—Robbie Smith's cinematic eye pervades the film, haunting the camera with a nonstop sense of voyeurism, evoking the ghostly steadicam technique made infamous in Kubrick's The Shining. But, where Kubrick aims high, Smith swings low, with sharp cutaways that assail the viewer with blasts of disorienting violence, culminating in a blood-drenched finale that's a sight to behold.

*Q&A following

California Premiere
Assembled by XPU$HER and made available through the Black-Torrent Release Group, The Lost Episode offers a raw and unsettling look at unaired footage captured during a police ride-along on Halloween night, 2004. The film follows officers Paul Massaro and Terrence Williams as they navigate the sleepy streets of Franklin, uncovering a chain of horrifying events and a disturbing conspiracy rooted in the heart of the small town they swore to protect.

*Q&A following

-FROM THE BRITISH BOARD OF FILM CLASSIFICATION-
Reality Killers is a horror film in which a man obsessed with violent 'snuff' videos, featuring people being abused, tortured and killed, goes on to commit his own similar crimes.
Reality Killers consists of a series of short vignettes in which people, including women and children, are killed. In some cases, acts of sadistic violence follow or involve sexual behaviour and nudity. The protagonist acts as a narrator, relishing in the violence and endorsing the actions of the killers. Women, in particular, are portrayed as either sexual objects to be abused or as predatory killers themselves. Potentially harmful attitudes, such as the suggestion that victims and perpetrators 'enjoy' violence, and that women are presented primarily as sex objects or predatory killers, are not clearly challenged, nor is there a narrative counterbalance to the sustained focus on sadism.

The BBFC considered whether the film's issues could be adequately addressed through intervention such as cuts. As Reality Killers consists almost entirely of scenes of sadistic violence and abuse, we determined that cuts would not effectively address these issues. The film, when taken as a whole, transgresses BBFC Classification Guidelines and policy, and we believe that its classification even at 18 would run contrary to broad public opinion. The BBFC therefore found Reality Killers to be unsuitable for classification.

Banned in the UK and lost for 20 years, Reality Killers will find its theatrical debut as our Saturday midnight screening.

Found footage isn't a genre often known for its masterful traditional cinematography. That's not to say that the cinematography in found footage films isn't impressive—it often is—but it's rarely traditional. Nightfall: A Paranormal Investigation, however, masterfully uses the hybrid format to showcase beautiful slow cinematography that eventually gives way to frenetic found footage as the horror grows more intense. It's not just the camerawork that makes this film impressive though, Nightfall makes incredible use of sound design, carefully assembled from thousands of samples, to make something that haunts the senses.

Beyond the impressive technical work, Nightfall is a masterclass in minimalist filmmaking. It takes a classic setup: Two young paranormal investigators take on a case that challenges their abilities and threatens their lives, and uses it as a launching off point for an incredible sensory exploration alongside a gentle, touching story about fraternity in the face of the supernatural.

McCurdy Point was the second feature film I watched as part of UFF8 programming, all the way back in July 2024. I distinctly remember having two thoughts. First: This film slaps, and second: If all the entries are this good how the heck are we going to fit them all in? Talk about a good omen. Nine months later we're stoked to be showing McCurdy Point in what is undeniably the most stacked UFF lineup yet. Given the time gap, I rewatched it last night to better write this up, and my god does it slap.

McCurdy Point follows five friends who travel to an old cabin in the woods to celebrate, but instead find themselves targeted by a malicious force that defies explanation. Starring an ensemble cast of improv comedians, instead of scoring laughs, they build intense tension and massive scares as the force picks them off one by one. A lean, mean supernatural horror film, McCurdy Point takes the “buncha guys visit a haunted cabin” setup and executes it to perfection. At 77 minutes, not a moment feels extraneous. Every laugh, every scare, every moment of silence feels brutally deliberate.

Cinema-in-Public is what we call films that are set in public areas and incorporate a blend of improv and script. UFF is proud to present its first Cinema-In-Public screening, Fat Tuesday.

Filmed in New Orleans on-location during the final days of Carnival, a group of friends is preyed upon by a mysterious killer (Hannah Gross). Filmed and edited by the criminally overlooked Jorge Torres-Torres (Toad Road, Sisters of the Plague) Fat Tuesday transcends traditional slashers by adding an element of verisimilitude previously unknown to the subgenre.

*Q&A following

Better known for his acting roles in a handful of TV shows and Hallmark movies, Markian Tarasiuk's directorial debut proves that he's a creative force to be reckoned with. Taking the simple approach—a sister hunts for her brother who disappeared in the wilderness of Vancouver Island—Tarasiuk manages to craft a compelling narrative with unexpected twists and some solid, unexpected scares.

In my eyes, one of the highest marks a Found Footage Film can earn is making the audience ask “Is this real?” Without further comment, I present a conversation from the UFF Programmers' internal chat:

Ozzie Gray video documents her investigation into the traumatic events from her early childhood, which involved her late grandmother, Dorothy Bell.