Channel Dread

Set within the crowded halls of a horror convention, Channel Dread reimagines a weekend built on spectacle and salesmanship as something quietly predatory. Its subject is the Entity, a figure conceived as the physical embodiment of allurement itself, drawn from the aesthetics of internet alternate-reality games and the uncanny glow of 1990s late-night television. Dressed in dull colors, its posture too correct and its hair too straight, the Entity is designed to sit just on the wrong side of human.

Co-created by Jasmine and Alyssa Arreola and shot entirely on location amid the convention's foot traffic, the film turns the friendliest corners of the fan experience into eerie ones, finding menace in the very places meant to delight. Handheld and restless, it keeps its audience uncertain about what is performance, what is footage, and what may be watching from just outside the frame. Actress Carolyn Hennesy appears as a special guest.

Made in forty-eight hours for the BloodBat Film Competition, Channel Dread received the Best Homage Award at the Screaming Room Film Festival, recognized for the precision with which it conjures a specific strain of analog dread and turns a place of commerce into a channel that will not switch off.