Slamdance 2026 Lineup Drops: The HMU Watchlist for LA’s Indie Chaos

A first look at Slamdance 2026 — where midnight energy, bold debuts, and genre-adjacent weirdness collide in Los Angeles.

Slamdance is back in Los Angeles for year two, and the 2026 lineup reads like a dare.

The artist-led festival “by filmmakers, for filmmakers” runs in-person Feb. 19–25, 2026, then goes virtual Feb. 24–March 6 on the Slamdance Channel. The programming team pulled 141 films from 10,000 submissions, including 50 world premieres spanning more than 50 countries. If you’re an HMU reader, the big takeaway isn’t the volume — it’s how much sneaky genre DNA is baked into this year’s slate, from horror-comedy and occult-adjacent shorts to unsettling documentary work and a few titles that sound like they were engineered in a basement with the lights off.

Slamdance has always been a proving ground for filmmakers who don’t ask permission, and that vibe is loud again in 2026. The festival is also emphasizing access and inclusion, with female, trans, and non-binary directors making up roughly half the program, a significant portion of titles from BIPOC creators, and a fully accessible festival experience supported by accessibility services and partners. For HMU fans, that matters because genre thrives when more voices get to bend it, break it, and rebuild it.

Here are the films and programs in the 2026 lineup that feel most “HMU-coded” — the ones likely to spark the comment section, fuel late-night group chats, and turn into “where do I watch this?” questions.

The horror and horror-adjacent short films are where Slamdance gets dangerous in the best way. Deadweight is the kind of title that practically dares you to look away, following a young woman trying to connect as bodies pile up while “something” consumes everything behind her. The Fan Man goes straight for claustrophobic dread with a tenant discovering a stranger living inside his bathroom ceiling fan, while The Chair is described as a simple carpentry job that isn’t simple at all — which usually means the object becomes the curse. Clarities taps modern paranoia with an ominous chain text spreading as a hotel rocketship prepares for launch, and that’s the kind of tech-tinged unease that plays well with horror crowds even if it’s not marketed as “horror.”

If you want possession and the occult, In Sickness and In Health (from Film Independent’s Project Involve selection) should be on your immediate radar: a couple tries to reconnect after a “grueling exorcism,” and the wife fears the ritual failed. That’s a clean premise with room for real psychological terror. On the more surreal/uncanny side, Domestic Demon leans into transformation and body unease as a mother’s need for control ignites something strange inside the home, and Correct Me If I’m Wrong centers a family attempting to purge a mysterious entity from their queer heir — which sounds like it could play as social horror, spiritual horror, or something beautifully unclassifiable.

Animated shorts also bring the nightmare fuel this year. Hungry Hollow follows a girl left for dead who is devoured by forest spirits, and blinks in mimi’s singing voice threads sleep paralysis with glimpses of wonder — the exact kind of liminal horror that creeps up on you days later. Bootstrapping for the Boobied goes straight for possession via self-help culture and “worksona” identity collapse, and if you’ve been watching how horror keeps cannibalizing modern burnout, that one sounds primed.

The festival’s Unstoppable program, which champions filmmakers with visible and non-visible disabilities, is stacked with titles that sound like genre or genre-adjacent thrillers even when they’re not. BLINDSIDED is described with a line that belongs on a horror poster: “The most terrifying things are the ones we don’t see coming.” HERE WE ARE AGAIN has a depressed man trying to get out of bed… except the bed won’t let him. That’s either a dark comedy, a monster movie, or both. Murphy’s Ranch drops two brothers into a hidden compound during a routine job where curiosity becomes a threat — cult vibes, conspiracy vibes, backwoods dread vibes. Even when these films aren’t labeled horror, they’re speaking the language.

HMU fans who like “weird internet” energy and modern exploitation-adjacent comedy should also flag a few episodic selections. Cat & Nat spirals into surreal territory from disturbing fortune cookie predictions, and Puke Bitch sounds like the kind of bleak, nasty small-town chaos that could veer into grim humor or full-on nightmare depending on execution. Slamdance loves material that walks that line.

For those who prefer dread rooted in reality, a couple documentaries feel like they’ll hit the horror nerve without a mask or monster. The Bulldogs follows East Palestine, Ohio after the catastrophic train derailment, and if you’ve ever said, “real life is scarier,” that’s the lane. STILL STANDING looks at toxic ash contamination after Los Angeles wildfires and the impossible choice of returning home — environmental horror, but real.

There are also a few genre-flirting feature narratives worth circling even if they aren’t pure horror. Matapanki has alcohol-activated superpowers and an international conflict spiral, which could land as punk superhero chaos with violent consequences. Santa Zeta is “YouTuber by day, vigilante by night,” which screams midnight crowd energy. And Tony Odyssey promises a surrealist Brazilian odyssey “to meet God” after stealing a new drug — which is either transcendent or catastrophic, and usually both.

Slamdance 2026 is also loaded with community events and industry programming, including Market Monday’s “NonDē Way” programming that openly aims to disrupt corporate indie filmmaking culture. That matters because festivals like Slamdance aren’t just screens — they’re incubators. If you’re tracking where tomorrow’s genre auteurs are coming from, this is one of the places they show up first.

Passes are on sale now, with sales closing Jan. 31 and individual tickets starting Feb. 1. Whether you’re going in person or watching virtually, HMU will be keeping an eye on the titles that feel like they’re built for the strange, the brutal, the funny-dark, and the genuinely unsettling.

If you had to pick one lane: are you chasing the occult and possession stuff first — or the “this isn’t horror but it sure feels like horror” titles that Slamdance always sneaks into the lineup?