What The Best Horror Film Festival In America Taught Me About My Favorite Genre

I’ve been writing about film for nearly 20 years, but I don’t attend the major film festivals. It’s not because I lack the desire, but because the entertainment industry can be relentlessly cost-prohibitive to the average person. Instead, I’ve carved out my own path, spending much of my time haunting smaller, genre-specific festivals — typically those rooted in the Midwest, LGBTQIA+ spaces, or the blood-soaked, boundary-pushing world of horror. There’s a certain magic in these spaces, an intimacy and authenticity that feels increasingly rare.

A few years ago, I took a risk and attended the Overlook Film Festival in New Orleans, Louisiana. My motivation was singular: they were screening one of my favorite movies of all time, “Phantom of the Paradise,” for its 50th anniversary, with Paul Williams himself in attendance. At the time, that was all that mattered. But what I found there went far beyond a single screening. The atmosphere, the people, the sheer reverence for horror in all its forms was electric. It felt like finding my people. I’ve returned every year since, saving diligently just to make the pilgrimage.

Co-founded by Michael Lerman and Landon Zakheim, I’ll say it plainly: the Overlook Film Festival isn’t just one of the best horror festivals in America — it might be the best. Over four days in America’s most haunted city, The Overlook Film Festival turns into a living, breathing celebration of horror. While other festivals chase bigger premieres or flashier names, Overlook offers a genuine, all-encompassing love for the genre that you can feel in every screening, conversation, and late-night moment in or around the historic Prytania Theatres.

Unless a festival is region-specific, any film festival worth its salt should have a diverse, multicultural slate of titles. The lineup at the Overlook Film Festival is consistently fantastic, but the intentionality behind the international programming goes above and beyond the usual fare. Irish director Damian McCarthy’s “Oddity” won the Audience Award for Feature Film in 2024, and he returned this year with “Hokum.” Australia’s Adrian Chiarella devastated audiences with “Leviticus.” Canadian filmmaker Simon Glassman’s “Buffet Infinity” told the story of rival restaurants competing through local TV commercials, and Japan’s “Exit 8” screened just ahead of its theatrical release.

There was “Flush” from France, “The Furious” from Hong Kong, Italy’s “The Holy Boy,” and New Zealand’s gothic Maori horror “Mārama.” The Grand Jury Prize for Feature Film winner, “Never After Dark,” came from Japan. “New Group,” Yûta Shimotsu’s follow-up to “Best Wishes to All,” also represented Japan well. “The Restoration at Grayson Manor” out of Ireland, “Saccharine” from Australia,” Taiwan’s “Suffocation,” and a number of films from the short film block all prove that horror is a universal language.

To emphasize that the Overlook’s international offerings aren’t just lip service, they celebrated the 100-year anniversary of “A Page of Madness,” the very first horror film to come out of Japan, by screening the film with an original composition from Jeff Pagano (Marigny Opera House) and performed by a six-piece orchestra handpicked by the maestro. These films weren’t cast aside in some easily-ignorable programming block, either. They were the films on everyone’s lips and some of the buzziest films of the entire festival. Fans from all over the world came together to remind us all that no matter how our governments try to pit us against each other, we all scream in the same language.

Festival co-founder Landon Zakheim is one of the genre’s most vocal proponents of immersive horror theater, and brings that love to the Overlook every year. I’ll be the first to admit that even as a dyed-in-the-wool horror fan, immersive experiences are often a step too far for me. I’m an incredibly reactive person once my fight or flight kicks in (I’m a “fight,” thank you), and because no one deserves to be reflexively punched in the face for being good at their job, it makes me a liability. I do, however, love to grab lunch and sit outside the rooms where the immersive events take place just to listen to people scream.

A number of the events were put on by Charming Stranger, including the Shakespeare-inspired HAG event that tasked participants with removing weird, witchy squatters, or CLAWS, a 45-minute interactive thriller for one person to experience via a phone call that freaked out one person so badly, I overheard them confess they had trouble sleeping that night. Fangoria’s Angel Melanson tried out ETERNAL, a 25-minute immersive audio experience involving beds and blindfolds that proves once again that she is stronger than I will ever be. A lot of folks reserve hands-on horror experiences for haunts in October, but the Overlook Film Festival gives fans the opportunity to feel horror with their whole body in April.

And beyond the immersive horror, there’s plenty of fun to be found with performances by “Dragula” stars, The Boulet Brothers, and New Orleans-specific vampire celebrations in honor of the city being the home of “Interview with the Vampire” creator, Anne Rice. These experiences turn passive fans into active participants, fostering a sense of belonging and community rooted in a mutual love of fear and storytelling.

The opening night of the Overlook Film Festival included a second line parade presented by Shudder, with John Kassir (aka the Crypt Keeper from “Tales from the Crypt”) serving as the parade marshal. Fans, filmmakers, and festival attendees marched along with a brass band down the streets of New Orleans, announcing to all who could hear that the festival had begun. Shortly after the parade, it was announced that “Tales from the Crypt” would be coming to Shudder, and Kassir spoke on a panel hosted by Perri Nemiroff and Matt Donato about his journey to becoming the Crypt Keeper.

In honor of the 45th anniversary of “An American Werewolf in London,” horror maestro Sam Zimmerman presented Rick Baker with the Master of Horror award. Baker provided an ample behind-the-scenes look at his career, telling his saga from the set of “Werewolf” and the creation of the transformation scene that won him the first-ever Academy Award for Best Makeup.

Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick, and Travis Sedg Bacon showed up to talk about their made-at-home horror comedy “Family Movie,” and plenty of fans got some face time with their idols due to the Overlook’s intimate setting. There was also an entire day dedicated to the world premiere of Larry Fessenden’s “Trauma, Or Monsters All,” his monster-mash meet-up of characters from “Habit,” “Depraved,” and “Blackout,” all of which also played. This is the kind of event that horror fans will geek out about for the rest of their lives, but normies would have no idea why this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Horror, for as popular as it has become, is still a genre for outcasts and weirdos, and a place like Overlook embraces that reality.

Given the smaller size of the Overlook Film Festival compared to, say, Fantastic Fest or South By Southwest, the likelihood of getting to casually have a one-on-one conversation with one of your horror heroes is significantly higher. Sitting in the theater to watch “Boorman and the Devil,” David Kittredge’s critically acclaimed documentary about the making of “Exorcist II: The Heretic,” was already great, but looking over to see Rick Baker casually hanging out a row over was an extra treat. 

On a personal note, a highlight was getting to chat with “Goody Goody” director Raymond Creamer, who confessed to being a big fan of my work as a journalist/critic. I may or may not have cried in Vic’s Kangaroo Cafe because it meant so much to hear that my voice inspired an independent horror filmmaker, even in a small capacity. Whatever, I’m a sap.

All week long, I listened to fans, filmmakers, and fellow members of the press talk about the incredible moments they shared with some of their heroes. And while this sort of exchange is not exclusive to a place like Overlook, it occurred at a much higher rate than is standard at other festivals. “Mārama” director Toa Stappard came in from New Zealand and shared personal stories about his family, Jorma Taccone made a stop on the continued tour of “Over Your Dead Body” to chat with fans, and John Kassir gave us a taste of his famous, Sinbad and Rose O’Donnell-beating “Star Search” performance from 1985. Hell, I watched him admire a fan with multiple Crypt Keeper tattoos who was shaking as if he’d seen the face of God.

And there were no autograph hounds or eBay resellers to be found (let’s keep it that way).

Retrospective screenings are something I live for, and the Overlook Film Festival once again gave us a gift, this time in the form of a special screening of Joel DeMott’s “Demon Lover Diary,” the 1980 cinema verité documentary that is next to impossible to see legally. The film centers on Jeff Kreines, a documentary filmmaker tasked with shooting a low-budget horror movie for Michigan factory workers Don Jackson and Jerry Younkins. “Demon Lover Diary” evokes one of the greatest documentaries ever made, “American Movie,” but if the Midwest filmmakers at the center had absolutely no idea what they were doing, they cast teenage girls as the lead actors, used real guns with real bullets as props, and the film was directed by a woman. It is legitimately one of the most insane movies I’ve ever seen.

Overlook presented the extremely rare film to honor the passing of director Joel DeMott, as well as the memory of former Overlook artistic director Doug Jones, who loved “Demon Lover Diary” more than just about anyone else on the planet. Before his passing in 2023, Doug actually name-dropped this film to me once he learned I was from the Midwest and had an affinity for Midwest filmmaking. It was a memory that had been buried until the film began to play, and the conversation we had about the film in the lobby of Vidiots in Los Angeles came flooding back to me. I’ll be forever grateful to the Overlook for filling in this hole in my Swiss cheese recollection.

Horror films are a cultural archive, preserving what society struggles to confront. The genre endures because it adapts endlessly, proving that fear is timeless and that stories can survive beyond any single life. The Overlook Film Festival understands this implicitly, and the genre is better for it. I can’t wait until next year.