The HollyShorts Film Festival returns to Hollywood for its 22nd edition from August 13–23, 2026, bringing audiences another expansive showcase of short-form filmmaking from around the world. This year’s programme features one of the festival’s strongest horror and Midnight Madness selections to date, spanning psychological terror, body horror, science fiction, folk horror, dark comedy and supernatural nightmares.
Among the most prominent titles is MORTY, executive produced by Jordan Peele through Monkeypaw Productions. The film follows a teenage girl who discovers that her younger brother’s new toy comes with terrifying consequences, turning an apparently innocent object into the source of a growing nightmare.
Peele also executive produces Thick Skin, a visceral body-horror story about a Hispanic woman whose obsession with self-control begins to manifest through horrifying physical transformations. Another Monkeypaw-backed selection, The Pigs Underneath, uses horror as an allegory for class exploitation, following residents of a struggling town who are forced to meet a brutal quota with terrifying consequences.
Star Power Meets Horror
The 2026 horror lineup also brings a strong collection of recognizable actors to the festival.
Dustin Milligan headlines the vampire relationship thriller Are We Still Married?, while Ashley Bell stars in I Wanna Go Home, an isolated psychological chiller. Melinda Clarke appears in the darkly satirical NO WORRIES, bringing another familiar face to a programme that frequently combines established talent with emerging filmmakers.
Samantha Sloyan and Jay Huguley lead the lycanthropic nightmare Silver Anniversary, while Bradley Whitford, known for Get Out, headlines Mike Diva’s revenge comedy-horror FruitHead.
The festival also features Justin H. Min in Matthew Puccini’s darkly toxic Callback, while Wrenn Schmidt anchors the unsettling near-future science-fiction story Imprint. Dean Norris leads TERM, which also features voice performances from Mark Hamill and Mindy Cohn.
Psychological Horror and Science-Fiction Nightmares
Several selections use horror to explore fear through increasingly surreal or speculative situations.
Hide, from the Academy Award-winning team behind Curfew, stars musician Shakey Graves, also known as Alejandro Rose-Garcia, as a father desperately attempting to protect his daughter from an unexplained nightly terror.
In Night Feeds, filmmaker Rana Roy explores postpartum paranoia through a story starring May Calamawy, known for Moon Knight. The film places its psychological horror within a world already facing a broader crisis, creating a story in which personal anxiety and external instability become increasingly difficult to separate.
Science fiction also plays a major role in the lineup. EUROPA, starring Megan West and Derek Cecil, follows astronauts on a desperate mission to Jupiter’s frozen moon, while 8:38 places a woman in a race against time with only a single phone call and fragments of memory available to her.
Artichoke combines science fiction and survival across parallel realities, while The Color explores the aftermath of an asteroid strike and the terror that follows a global catastrophe. BLOOM moves into body horror as a woman becomes convinced that something monstrous has replaced a surgically removed tumour.
Monsters, Curses and Unexplained Evil
A number of selections turn familiar situations into supernatural nightmares.
YAOGUAI follows a Taiwanese American actress whose roadside encounter awakens an ancient evil, while The End Is at Hand transforms an apparently routine repair at a mobile phone shop into a sinister after-hours encounter.
You’re Not Safe follows a woman whose reality begins to unravel after she wakes beside a stranger’s belongings with no memory of how they got there. Make Sense, directed by Jackson Beebe, takes horror into the kitchen with a culinary nightmare, adding another unusual setting to the festival’s genre selection.
The festival’s folk-horror offerings include Camp Oleander, which reimagines the conversion-camp narrative through unsettling supernatural horror. The King of the Full Moon Night follows a doctor summoned to treat an ailing monarch, while Never Tonight traps two brothers inside a cursed karaoke purgatory where confession becomes their only apparent route to escape.
Horror Meets Comedy and Pop Culture
HollyShorts’ Midnight Madness programme also demonstrates how effectively horror can collide with comedy and contemporary culture.
Beware C*ckblocking Ghosts turns teenage heartbreak into supernatural carnage when a jealous ghost interrupts homecoming season. Meanwhile, I Want to Hook Up With Dylan But My Social Score Is Negative Ten Trillion combines evil doppelgängers, Satan and a blood-soaked homage to Carrie in an intentionally chaotic satire of popularity and identity.
Take Me to Your Merch pits a washed-up emo band against extraterrestrial superfans with apocalyptic intentions, while MANTIS: STREAM! LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE explores the darker side of internet fame after a livestream engagement turns fatal.
The programme continues its mixture of genre and comedy with The Seeing Eye Dog Who Saw Too Much, which adopts the aesthetic of a faux-lost Italian giallo, and Thanks To Meet You!, which brings absurdist British humour into the Midnight Madness selection.
International Horror Voices
International Horror VoicesThe HollyShorts horror programme extends well beyond the United States, highlighting genre filmmakers from across the world.
Ireland contributes Banshee, which draws on Irish folklore through the story of a deadly family curse. Japan is represented by SUMMER PROJECT, following a group of children whose grisly discovery leads to irreversible tragedy.
Brazil’s The Veil explores a religious cult that begins spiralling into genuine possession, while Norway contributes the action-horror spectacle Temporal Takedown.
Germany’s The Color offers another vision of cosmic terror following an asteroid impact, adding a science-fiction dimension to the festival’s international genre programme.
A Strong British Presence
The United Kingdom is particularly well represented in this year’s horror selection.
Fionn Whitehead, Finn Cole and Anne-Marie Duff star in Bundle, a nerve-shredding descent into familial chaos. The Witches of Pool Bottom transforms teenage body-image anxieties into visceral supernatural horror, while student short Fawn explores grief and buried trauma.
Blondi takes an audacious and darkly comic approach to World War II through the perspective of Adolf Hitler’s beloved German Shepherd. Thanks To Meet You! adds a distinctly British strain of absurdist comedy to the festival’s Midnight Madness programme.
From Cursed Birthdays to Haunted Inheritances
The broader selection continues to explore horror through an eclectic collection of premises.
Benny’s Second Birthday turns a birthday celebration into a murderous nightmare, while Cracked transforms an ordinary breakfast routine into something far more sinister. Gimme brings horror to Hanukkah, and Nail-Biter centres on a disturbing family curse involving finger-devouring.
The Inheritance explores the terror of a haunted legacy, while Slay The She-Wolves offers a gothic fairy-tale approach to the genre. Scissors brings a queer twist to the slasher format, and They Haunt Him follows three teenagers pursuing viral fame.
The selection also includes Eat, which turns an encounter between two people into primal body horror, and LEOPARD, which pushes genre boundaries through a more unconventional horror approach.
A Festival Built for Genre Discovery
The 2026 HollyShorts horror lineup demonstrates the range available within contemporary short-form genre filmmaking. Rather than limiting horror to conventional supernatural stories, the programme uses the genre to examine technology, social media, class, family, identity, relationships, grief, body image and cultural anxieties.
The presence of filmmakers backed by major creative figures such as Jordan Peele, alongside emerging directors and internationally produced shorts, also highlights HollyShorts’ role as a platform where new genre voices can reach audiences alongside established talent.
The 2026 HollyShorts Film Festival takes place August 13–23 at the iconic TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, with virtual screenings also available through the festival’s official streaming platform. The festival will culminate in its annual Awards Gala celebrating achievements across short filmmaking.
For horror fans, the combination of psychological thrillers, supernatural stories, body horror, science fiction, dark comedy and international genre cinema makes this year’s programme one of the festival’s most diverse showcases.
The complete list of official selections is available at the HollyShorts website.
For festival information, tickets and passes, visit the HollyShorts ticket and passes page.
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