Ripcord’s Halloween Film Festival Reveals Top 12 Shorts Competing for $200,000 in Prizes
Ripcord’s Halloween Film Festival has revealed the 12 short films that will compete for more than $200,000 in cash prizes during a live finale at Hollywood’s TCL Chinese Theatre on October 29. The inaugural festival’s finalists include horror, science fiction, thriller and fantasy projects selected from more than 500 submissions.
Originally planned as a top 10, the final lineup expanded to 12 films following closely contested fan voting. The finalists will screen for a live audience, with a jury of filmmakers, festival programmers, producers and designers determining the winners. The first-place award is $100,000, which the festival describes as the largest prize ever awarded at a short film festival.
The 12 selected films emerged from a group of 50 shorts curated for the festival. Those films remain available to watch for free at the official Ripcord website, where audiences can also participate in the festival’s online programming.
The finalists span a range of genre approaches, from supernatural encounters and folkloric creatures to cannibalism, body horror and unsettling comedy.
Tim Schwagel’s Blossom Needs a Ride Home follows its title character after she defeats a bloodthirsty maniac, only to face the challenge of getting home. In Breeder, directed by Sapphire Sandalo, a woman uncertain about having children is hunted by a demonic horse-man drawn from Filipino folklore.
Daniel Chimes’ Dirty Fuzz follows a rookie police officer who accidentally shoots her corrupt partner and must enlist an unlikely group of underworld figures to cover up the incident. Carlos A.F. Lopez’s Dream Creep centers on a couple awakened by disturbing nighttime sounds, while Carl Fry and Maxwell Nalevansky’s Harold Eats Maude explores an unusual relationship involving a cannibal known for eating priests and a woman fascinated by his behavior.
Marcella Ochoa’s Hour of Blood moves to 1915 Texas, where a young girl must defend her family ranch after local ranchers begin mysteriously disappearing. J. Zachary Thurman’s It Helps follows a sleepless woman who discovers that her brother’s strange sleep machine may serve a far more disturbing purpose than she realized.
Julian Doan’s Long’s Long Lost & Mini Mart takes place in the back of a Little Saigon convenience store, where a young customer reanimates his dead father for one final conversation. Talia Shea Levin’s Make Me a Pizza follows a bored housewife who attempts to secure free pizza through seduction, raising the question of whether the arrangement is worth the price.
The remaining finalists include Neal Suresh Mulani’s Rat!, about a music journalist whose accusation against a global pop star prompts the singer’s devoted fans to seek retribution; Katelyn Douglass’ Spanked by a Ghost, in which an unseen entity’s actions awaken a force a woman cannot control; and Sophia Parella’s Zippy’s House, which follows a teenager attending a strange classmate’s birthday party and discovering he may be the only guest.
The festival has also announced its five-person jury. Tim Miller, director of Deadpool and Terminator: Dark Fate, joins the panel alongside Jean Anne Lauer, director of short film programming at Fantastic Fest; Lisa Ogdie, a short film programmer for the Sundance Film Festival; Emmy-winning designer Neville Page, whose credits include Avatar, TRON: Legacy and Star Trek; and producer Peter Phok, whose genre credits include A24’s X trilogy, The House of the Devil, The Innkeepers and Stake Land.
Miller began his career in visual effects and founded Blur Studio. He also co-created the Emmy-winning Netflix anthology Love, Death & Robots with David Fincher and created Prime Video’s Secret Level. Lauer has worked at Fantastic Fest since 2013 and previously directed the Cine Las Americas International Film Festival. Ogdie has helped select Sundance’s short-film lineup from more than 10,000 submissions annually since 2009 and also serves as Head of Cinema Programming in North America for Soho House & Co.
Page’s design work spans major science-fiction productions, including the Avatar franchise and Star Trek: Discovery, for which he created the character Saru. Phok brings more than two decades of independent genre-film experience to the jury and also served as executive producer on Most Beautiful Island, which won the SXSW Grand Jury Prize.
In a statement, festival directors Charlie Cleveland, John Hegeman and Stacy Jorgensen said the expanded lineup reflected the strength of the films and the closeness of the audience vote. They described the festival as an effort to connect genre filmmakers directly with fans, with the top prize intended to provide meaningful financial support for a filmmaker’s career.
Beginning October 26, Ripcord will host daily filmmaker Q&As on its website, allowing viewers to ask finalists about their productions, influences and future projects. Registration is free, and audiences can continue to stream the festival’s top 50 shorts online ahead of the finale.
The 12 finalists will screen at the TCL Chinese Theatre on October 29, with the winners scheduled to be announced the morning of October 30.
Fans can watch the selected shorts and find festival updates at ripcord.film.
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