Watch the 2025 BloodBat Film Competition Winners

Best of Show

TRAILERS OF TERROR

TRAILERS OF TERROR is a genre-hopping anthology of original fake horror-movie trailers, created in 48 hours for the BloodBat Film Competition at the Screaming Room Film Festival during MidSummer Scream in Long Beach, California. It features a special guest appearance by actress Carolyn Hennesy as a certain famous movie-theater spokesperson. Alongside its companion short, PEEPERS, it took home Best of Show, the competition's top prize.

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PEEPERS

PEEPERS is an original horror short created in 48 hours for the BloodBat Film Competition at the Screaming Room Film Festival during MidSummer Scream in Long Beach, California. Together with its companion piece, TRAILERS OF TERROR, it earned Best of Show, the competition's top prize.

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Most Creative

TLACATLI (MIRROR)

TLACATLI (MIRROR) is an original horror short created in 48 hours for the BloodBat Film Competition at the Screaming Room Film Festival during MidSummer Scream in Long Beach, California, where it won the Most Creative Award. Drawing on Aztec mythology and classic Twilight Zone-style suspense, the film was conceived, written, shot, and cut over a single convention weekend, filmed entirely on a phone and finished with a two-person crew.

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Best Homage

CHANNEL DREAD

CHANNEL DREAD is an original horror short created in 48 hours for the BloodBat Film Competition at the Screaming Room Film Festival during MidSummer Scream in Long Beach, California, where it won the Best Homage Award. Inspired by internet ARGs and the uncanny glow of 90s late-night television, the film takes the friendliest place in horror, a convention floor built on spectacle and things to buy, and quietly turns it sinister. At its center is the Entity: the physical embodiment of allurement

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Buffalo 8 exists to make independent horror easier to make - and easier to find. They back first-time directors, take on films the studio system won't touch, and stay with a project from script through distribution when most shops tap out at post. What they do for filmmakers is practical; what they do for the rest of us is prove there's still a path.

That's the reason they sponsored the inaugural BloodBat Film Competition. The BloodBat teams spent a weekend chasing an idea instead of waiting for permission — the exact instinct Buffalo 8 spends its whole business rewarding. If watching these films leaves you thinking you could do this too, follow through. Buffalo 8 is the proof that you can.