Black Gloves, Found Footage, and Home Invasions

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If Thursday and Friday were the appetizer and first main course of Nightmares Film Festival 2026, then Saturday was an all-you-can-eat platter and Sunday the dessert. Found footage, gialli, home invasion chills, chamber piece thrills, pulsating space rocks, black gloves & blades, a penis monster…you name it, Nightmares had it. Yes, even a machete-wielding, jet ski-riding rapper.

Alex Hera’s What I Remember and Ned Crowley’s Dead Drop both brought in on the thriller front, each tackling a different area of the genre. They did so in intriguing ways – sometimes funny and sometimes not – establishing both as films worth seeking out when they hit wider release in the near future. Of course, this festival has never had a problem when it comes to showcasing movies worth watching (be they features or shorts).

Speaking of shorts, themed blocks were on deck for the back half of the festival weekend. I’m not just talking genre-themed blocks, although there were plenty of those centering around horror shorts, midnighters, thrillers, docs, and horror comedies. Co-founder Jason Tostevin prides himself each year on curating a few hyper-specific blocks and 2026 was no different. This year’s dark offerings on that front included “Avian Overlords”, “It Watches Back”, “Malignant Growths”, and an especially-striking Italian horror centric one entitled “BLCK GLVS”. All were great, but as a giallo fan starved by a lack of modern options, that last one really hit the spot. Special shoutouts to Jeff Speed’s Red Ribbons in the House of Stained Glass and Domenico Montixi’s They Rose from the Grave and It Was…the Apocalypse! for sating my hunger for new Italian Horror.

Every year, the fest manages to roll out at least one utterly gonzo affair full of bravura performances and bottled insanity. No 2026 selection fits that bill more than Drew Britton’s Flytrapper. Co-lead/co-writer Georgia Lee King explodes onto the screen in this gnarly female-led horror opus. Her co-lead, Leah Piescinski, is no less impressive in the quieter role. Director/co-writer Britton has crafted a grimy, naturalistic, and mean slice of horror filmmaking here. Flytrapper might not be for everyone, but it is certain to strike a chord with many a horror fan, and it did just that with the Nightmares audience.

David Gordon’s Astrolatry rolled out the midnight movie goods. If you have ever wondered what it might look like if Frank Henenlotter had made Maniac instead of Bill Lustig, wonder no more. Astrolatry is that film. A movie perhaps outright destined for a future Vinegar Syndrome disc release, Gordon’s goopy incel terror tale features a weird meteorite, heaps of goo, loads of masturbation, and a central performance by lead Ethan Daniel Corbett that is as impressive as it is off-putting.

There was also plenty on hand for fans of the found footage subgenre. Saturday’s premiere of John Abbott’s When You See It served up the supernatural side of the subgenre with a film centering on a pair of would-be paranormal investigators who find themselves wishing they didn’t find what they had been looking for. A well-worn story, to be sure, but one that Abbott & Co. play out in some very interesting ways with a very game set of naturalistic performers.

Sunday then unleashed a double-feature composed of 2025’s Looky-loo and its brand-new sequel, Looky-loo: Part II. Filmmaker Jason Zink’s two-part (for now) opus dives headfirst into the “killer-recording-his-disturbing-deeds” side of the found footage subgenre as we follow the titular fiend around on his creepy, murder-filled exploits. Fans of the first one will find a lot to love in the second, as Zink and his team have delivered a more well-rounded experience that takes a deeper look into not only the hows and whys of Mr. looky-loo, but also how we engage with films of this type.

Nightmares 2026 then closed out with simultaneous screenings of two films that tackle home invasion in two very different ways: John Veron’s Godmother and Eric Yoder’s Death Came Knocking. Godmother sees a trio of young (mostly) carefree adults checking into what ends up being the worst AirBnB weekend vacation of their lives, courtesy of a pair of (not-so-)well-meaning hosts (Dee Wallace, Bruce Davison). It’s a slick, very well-made slice of survival horror that is sure to make a splash once it is distributed.

Equally-well-made, but a whole lot grimier is Death Came Knocking. The title is a pretty self-explanatory, in which fiends come a-knockin’ at someone’s door. Shot on 16mm and filled with murder, madness, and a ventriloquist dummy…there’s a lot to love here. Yoder is an SFX artist-turned-director and he brings his talents to bear, crafting a dark terror tale that still lingers in the mind after the credits roll.

All in all, it was a sublime two days of horror cinema spent with a horde of people that I consider family at this point, be they folks I’ve been attending this festival with since 2016 or ones that I only just met this weekend. There’s no place that this horror fanatic would rather be each October. That’s not something that can be said about every festival that has survived this long, but it has always been true of NFF for me.