Starting in 2020, we've curated a separate Streaming Edition of the H. P. Lovecraft Film Festival, with streaming tickets available to Cosmic and Weird horror fans worldwide. This year's takes place December 5-7, with extended viewing through December 9th, just in time to lend some spookiness to this wintry time, in the spirit of "Ghost Stories for Xmas". It brings together a full weekend's worth of short and feature films, which will be released on a rolling schedule, allowing you to take the weekend off, put up your feet and follow along with films as they're released, and tune into streaming Q&As with many of the filmmakers. It's a scheduled and curated festival experience in your living room with hosted introductions.
Feature Films
Short Films
Films at this event
In 16th Century England, Pathologist Tennebris and his son Lux - mourn the passing of Agatha, the revered matriarch of their family stronghold. Amidst their solemn preparations to inter the deceased, simmering paternal animosity within the crypt awakens an ancient spirit, Belial. This malevolent force breathes life back into Agatha's corpse, opening the gates of hell for a nightmarish family reunion steeped in bloodshed and ruin.
Following a devastating and inexplicable interstellar event, a fracturing working class family struggles with their place in the cosmos. Based on the short story by Jeffrey Thomas.
Amid the wide fields and narrow roads of the countryside, a father and daughter find solace in each other’s company and the quiet rhythm of farm life. Yet the stillness conceals whispers of something unseen in the shadows of an old barn, testing their bond against forces they cannot name.
"Ceaseless" is an entry in the Lovecraft Under the Gun 72 Hour Film contest! Each team was required to use a prop and line of dialogue in their film, and had 3 days to write, shoot, edit, and score a complete short film. This screening and audience vote determines the winner!
Maritime tough Guy Devon Leroux travels to the creepy fishing village of Shellbrook In search of his ex-girlfriend only to discover she’s joined a monstrously mutated cult enthralled by the elder god of lobsters
"Dead Exposure" is an entry in the Lovecraft Under the Gun 72 Hour Film contest! Each team was required to use a prop and line of dialogue in their film, and had 3 days to write, shoot, edit, and score a complete short film. This screening and audience vote determines the winner!
A student moves into a house where a silent old man plays unsettling violin music in his attic every night. Disturbed yet intrigued, the student seeks to uncover the mystery behind the haunting sounds and the curtained attic window.
"Lovecraft Without Tears" is an entry in the Lovecraft Under the Gun 72 Hour Film contest! Each team was required to use a prop and line of dialogue in their film, and had 3 days to write, shoot, edit, and score a complete short film. This screening and audience vote determines the winner!
A man longs for something he encountered in the forests of Austria.
"Popthulhu" is an entry in the Lovecraft Under the Gun 72 Hour Film contest! Each team was required to use a prop and line of dialogue in their film, and had 3 days to write, shoot, edit, and score a complete short film. This screening and audience vote determines the winner!
Possession(s) is a claustrophobic psychological horror set in an apartment in the dead of night. Eloïse finds herself confronting demonic entities seeking to possess her through the eerie sounds of a phonograph. Music and occultism intertwine in a macabre ritual—doomed to repeat itself endlessly...
"Shadow Over Wilmington" is an entry in the Lovecraft Under the Gun 72 Hour Film contest! Each team was required to use a prop and line of dialogue in their film, and had 3 days to write, shoot, edit, and score a complete short film. This screening and audience vote determines the winner!
A self-promoting influencer inadvertently conjures an evil version of herself.
Taylor is a seasoned lady of the night, settling into her usual quiet routine. But when a strange customer hires her, her night takes and unexpected and otherworldly turn.
"Tfarcevolph" is an entry in the Lovecraft Under the Gun 72 Hour Film contest! Each team was required to use a prop and line of dialogue in their film, and had 3 days to write, shoot, edit, and score a complete short film. This screening and audience vote determines the winner!
"The Desires of Objects" is an entry in the Lovecraft Under the Gun 72 Hour Film contest! Each team was required to use a prop and line of dialogue in their film, and had 3 days to write, shoot, edit, and score a complete short film. This screening and audience vote determines the winner!
There’s a reason no one has studied the play - the one notorious for driving readers insane. Three students divide a copy into quarantined thirds, allowing them to safely perform research on the text. But the endeavor takes a sinister turn when one of them reads more than just his share. Based on the seminal collection of horror stories by Robert W. Chambers.
"The Last Sitting" is an entry in the Lovecraft Under the Gun 72 Hour Film contest! Each team was required to use a prop and line of dialogue in their film, and had 3 days to write, shoot, edit, and score a complete short film. This screening and audience vote determines the winner!
After long eons beneath the sea, the time has come for the Old Gods to rise from the depths and to reclaim the Earth once more. The cities of men will fall beneath their titan tread, and their ravenous tentacles will devour all who try to flee before them.
"The Translator" is an entry in the Lovecraft Under the Gun 72 Hour Film contest! Each team was required to use a prop and line of dialogue in their film, and had 3 days to write, shoot, edit, and score a complete short film. This screening and audience vote determines the winner!
Three friends awaken something supernatural through a thrifted Ouija board—only to discover it’s far more interested in exposing their secrets than answering their questions. As paranoia and betrayal spiral, a deadly rift erupts between two best friends.
Set in 1960s Port Edward, "WAT’SA" is a haunting, all-Sm’algya̱x horror based on a powerful Tsimshian legend. As Jeremy works a late shift in the North Pacific Cannery, a shape-shifting sea otter spirit begins to stalk him, blurring the line between reality and the supernatural in the first-ever cinematic portrayal of the ‘Wat’sa. Recorded in Sm’algya̱x and Japanese with English subtitles.
Set in 1970, A BLIND BARGAIN reimagines the lost 1922 Lon Chaney silent film of the same name. A desperate young man strikes a dark deal with an unhinged doctor, offering his mother as a subject for the physician's twisted experiments.
Detective Beaubien, armed only with his vast knowledge and a copy of the Necronomicon, is investigating mysterious disappearances on a windy island.
A lonely prisoner longs to escape isolation and experience human connection.
Based on the short story by H. P. Lovecraft.
A cleaner in a library becomes aware of a book – or two – that promise a gateway to the The Old Ones.
This film was made for the Film Intensive as part of the Bachelor of Screen Arts at Massey University in Wellington, New Zealand
Unable to get over the loss of his wife, David, a talented painter, encounters an enigmatic blind woman who gives him a key with the promise of meeting her once again. Following this encounter, David develops an overwhelming obsession with triangular shapes, culminating in the acquisition of a pyramidal lamp with the power to open a door to the afterlife.
Stranded in the remote Chinese wilderness, a mother and daughter must survive being hunted by a mysterious beast.
The distant sound of church bells signals the beginning of an apocalypse.
In this H.P. Lovecraft adaptation, Carter, a grief-stricken young man, and his mentor Warren, an elder female professor of the occult, search for a portal to the underworld in an abandoned cemetery.
When Maya commits to a month of sobriety and takes up sculpting as a hobby, her crab sculptures terrorize her former drinking buddy, her brother Toby.
While grieving the loss of her father in his remote countryside home, a young woman makes a chilling discovery that suggests eternal life.
A young woman traveling solo on a road trip stops in a small town in the middle of the night, where she learns of an urban legend about the area.
A tentacled lake monster exacts revenge upon a noble but flawed fisherman.
In 1920s Providence, a disoriented Helen wakes up after a wild party. Her roommate, Elizabeth, is looking for a missing occult grimoire they read the night before, unaware that the book has unleashed something that makes reality and the supernatural blur into one.
In 1953, two men grapple with their relationship's future as a mysterious presence lurks outside their motel room.
Loosely based on ""The Yellow Sign"" by Robert W. Chambers.
When contact is lost with Samuel Harth, the Algan Space Corporation looks into his memories to see what unfolded during a mission to Planet COR-73, unraveling a cosmic mystery in the process.
A priest at a small town parish falls under the sway of the Reliquary and the Old One, Azathoth. Intoxicated with the dark truths shown to him, the priest takes to the confessional booth to tell an ancient tale to his captive audience.
Stefano spends his last doubloon on a sexy Siren at Sea Legs Inn, but Sawney Beane gets the last laugh.
A fragmented astronomer looks to the stars to find comfort in the darkest of places.
Investigators visit the site of a strange disappearance – a solitary birdwatching hut, deep in the forest.
A girl visits her grandmother, whom she hasn't seen in years. But what she finds will not be exactly what she expected.
A social worker's obsession with a case plunges him into a fight for survival against malevolent forces.
Marion Wheeler is called in to a routine meeting with her boss, a high ranking suit at the shadowy SCP Foundation, only to end up with a gun to her head and her identity in question. These are the perils of being the organization's Chief of Antimemetics, a division dedicated to fighting memory consuming entities. Marion must convince her superior and his trigger happy assistant that she's not a spy before gettting dragged off to Xi-3 in this atmospheric sci-fi noir short starring Jasika Nicole, Neil Napier, Mateus Ward and Syd Kilroy.
A desperate man lost in the mountains has to reconstruct his past to understand how he reached the edge of insanity.
A sound recordist captures strange sonic phenomena underneath their house and things... escalate from there.
The first feature film based on any of Poe's works, Fall of the House of Usher is presented in a new restoration, translation, and with a new music score by Jay Woelfel.
It is often surreal and at times even meta. Certainly an influence on the later Vincent Price starring version.
A stop-motion short featuring toys about a mysterious grave bell that starts to ring...
During a waterfront outbreak that drives the infected into madness and hallucination, dockworker Steven Dorre witnesses a bizarre murder, and finds himself in possession of a mysterious case that threatens to unravel everything he thought he knew.
Desperate to marry the love of his life, an Undertaker’s apprentice digs up the grave of a mysteriously murdered bride in an attempt to rob her corpse of its ring.
When a dark and malevolent force begins sweeping through a quiet town, a young boy awakens to discover that his baby brother has somehow transformed overnight into a deranged adult man, who then immediately wreaks havoc on the family.
College student Luna decides to visit a star gazing party for Equinox, and for a once in ten thousand year event of multi-star alignment. She drives to the mysterious, haunted, Superstition mountains, Arizona. After a long hike into the wilderness she arrives to the GPS coordinates only to find the "party" has just one other guest attending.
This film is a scaled down and re-imagined version of H. P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness for the short film medium. Two researchers make a startling discovery in their exploration of the Antarctic continent.
Isaac is thrilled when his friend offers him the use of his family’s cabin in the woods to lose his virginity. But when his first time goes horribly wrong, he begins to believe it may be the work of a sinister circumcision cult!
Night after night, a man goes into the darkness and encounters a monstrous creature that speaks to him in an unknown language.
A determined researcher at the Insmouth Center for Marine Science uncovers a mysterious, glowing specimen linked to a doomed ship, the S.S. Fortuna. As she dives deeper into the investigation, the discovery of a regenerative, alien-like substance leads to dangerous consequences, blurring the line between scientific curiosity and cosmic horror.
An insecure man’s compulsion to know his partner's secrets leads him on an underworld descent where he makes contact with something non-human.
After surviving a house party-turned-horror film, Tara and Mitch’s escape is cut short when they realize… they forgot their cat. Now, the couple must return to the house and brave the eldritch monster that waits inside to save not only the cat, but their relationship itself.
Five Star tells the story of Soung Kang (4x Best Actor Canadian Screen Awards Winner, PAUL SUN-HYUNG LEE, Kim’s Convenience), a diligent locksmith and first-generation immigrant whose quest for a perfect score from his client Maya leads him into an unexpected adventure. Called on an unusual job – to keep Maya’s closet door shut for good – Soung discovers a dark secret that challenges him to go to extraordinary lengths to secure his five star review.
In the oppressive atmosphere of a Victorian study, H.P. Lovecraft consumes an infusion prepared with extraterrestrial fungi and unleashes cosmic horrors. A night of madness and frenzied writing takes him to the brink of sanity, where reality blends with cosmic horror. At dawn, Lovecraft finds himself with the remnants of an experience that has marked him forever.
"Interference" tells the story of one teenage boy’s struggle with paranoia and identity amidst the start of the AIDS epidemic in the early 1980s.
Summoned to Karnstein Abbey to serve as a mourner at the funeral of their recently deceased abbess, Sister Trista she discovers web of evil involving demons, witchcraft and killer rabbits. But Sister Trista has a secret of her own.
While his wife and kids are out of town, a stressed-out illustrator risks losing everything when DAWN—an alluring A.I. creation—mysteriously arrives at his home and begins to seduce him.
An isolated young woman recovering from her past begins to experience episodes of sleep paralysis and must determine whether the phenomena is simply a part of her healing process – or if something otherworldly is truly waiting in the dark...
Late-90's. Long Island, NY. A young photographer returns home to make amends with his estranged sister. Burdened with providing their father's end-of-life care, her only comfort has been found in unorthodox communion.
A new horror is on the horizon, and terror is alive on the cursed planet ORBUS KAAL! The Wizard GAR-GNARGORATH has a gnawing desire to dominate this world through any means necessary, and all demons and lesser sorcerers tremble in fear at his psychotic ambitions! There is nothing that can stop the dread power of the arch wizard… or is there?
An alley cat discovers the reason behind the disappearance of several neighborhood pets.
Recovering addict Rene sees a creature poison the city's water supply and has to convince his skeptical sister and her no-nonsense boyfriend to stay away from the tap water.
Determined to give his life for the unknown, Samuel ventures into the dark depths of a crypt while his closest friend, Isaac, can only stay behind to witness Samuel's discovery via an improvised telephone.
After her mother's death, Ana returns to her reclusive father's house and comes across the paintings he creates to cope with grief. She soon discovers how these artworks reveal his deteriorating mental health and blur the boundaries between art and nightmare.
Following a strange and unsettling encounter with a black widow spider, a young virgin woman finds herself inexplicably pregnant. After the birth of her child, a shadowy cult begins to gather outside her home, drawn to the child as if by dark forces.
In his living room, a reader of H. P. Lovecraft's stories ponders the work of the "Master of Providence". One night he receives an anonymous phone call. He is invited to visit the “Great Library”... A cloud of smoke fills the room... The reader finds himself in front of a Lovecraftian library. The doors open...
In this enclosed space, whether real or imaginary, readers follow a thematic path (monsters, dreams, architecture, sounds, etc.) and meet prominent Lovecraft specialists.
A young man names Jacques, joins a group of wreckers in order to wreck and harvest a specific ship. But the night might take a stranger turn than expected and certainly not at all restful for any of our three protagonists.
After decades of men, women and children vanishing into the darkness of their rooms, a detective and mother must follow her child’s voice into the shadows, coming face to face with the shadows themselves.