Welcome to 2025! How far we have come. If you asked me all the way back in December if I’d still be sitting here today talking about 2024 indie horror films, I would have probably said . . . well, yes!
And I’m talking about them for good reason: In the realm of indie horror, 2024 delivered! Not only did Terrifier 3 win the Great Clown Box Office Battle of ‘24, movies like Late Night with the Devil and I Saw the TV Glow demonstrated the range of creative and terrifying possibilities when working within more limited means.
Indie horror rules year-round, but it’s easy to miss movies that head straight to the streamers. For this list, I’m focused on a spectrum of low- and microbudget films released online this year. They premiered on Tubi, Shudder, YouTube, film festivals, social media, and more. By no means is this meant to be a list of the “Best Indie Movies of 2024.” Instead, these are some of the movies that excited me most and model the magic only possible through indie grit.
For 2024 horror movies with theatrical releases, check out Christi Bandy’s awesome article.
(Okay, I might have cheated and included a few with limited theatrical releases on my post, too!)
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey 2 (dir. Rhys Frake-Waterfield)
I have been following Rhys Frake-Waterfield’s expanding Poohniverse since the first Blood and Honey showed us what one creative maniac can do when the public domain opens its hallowed halls to horror artists who love nothing more than destroying our childhood heroes!
Blood and Honey 2 delivers spectacular practical effects, gruesome gore, great makeup and costume design, and better acting than its predecessor.
Of course, it’s a totally absurd premise, but it works because it commits 1000%. The movie is self-aware, but it also treats its characters sincerely and manages to evoke real pathos. I mean, Winnie the Pooh runs around a rave carrying a chainsaw. My favorite movie of the year, right after The Substance.
.ask (dir. Chris Vander Kaay)
There are low budget, microbudget, and no budget films; and part of the joy of discovering these movies is being blown away by what people can do with virtually nothing. Chris Vander Kaay seems to have perfected the $200 film, if his feature debut .ask is any indication.
.ask is a masterful, refreshing take on found footage, interweaving Google drive videos, YouTube shorts, security cam moments, and scenes from the director’s actual life to piece together a “Monkey’s Paw” tale for the age of social media.
Chris Vander Kaay stars as Chris Vander Kaay, a social media influencer who learns the hard way to be careful what you wish for. The majority of the dialogue is improvised, and Vander Kaay delivers it with all the self-assured bravado of an influencer who is selling something and saying nothing. It’s brilliant.
Milk & Serial (dir. Curry Barker)
The most insidious element of Prank Shows is that the pranks themselves are almost never actual pranks. It’s just people being loudly obnoxious to unsuspecting strangers. Or manipulating people know in order to make them feel uncomfortable for a cheap laugh.
Horror movies are the best at gazing unflinchingly at the worst society has to offer; so, as it turns out, the social media pranking phenomenon makes for a great horror movie premise.
What’s the line between pranking and sociopathy? Curry Barker has one answer for us, and it unfolds over the course of a birthday party populated with social media pranksters and their friends.
This is one for the no-budget books. Tense, funny, and held together by some wonderful performances, Milk & Serial is so good, it even inspired the name of Rise from the Dead Podcast co-host Mike&Serial.
Lowlifes (dir. Tesh Guttikonda)
Directed by Tesh Guttikonda, who also wrote the fantastic horror thriller Influencer (2022), I call this the indie sleeper of 2024, and I’m going to be really vague here, because I went in totally blind and had the best surprise viewing experience of the year.
Family vacation in an RV. Teen girl and her annoying younger brother. Conservative-coded parents. They get stranded out in the boonies and must take shelter at a remote home with a backwoods family. It sounds like you’ve seen it all before, but you haven’t! It’s like a subverted mashup of Wrong Turn and The Hills Have Eyes. Great cast, fantastic acting. Watch it!
By the way, this is a Tubi original. Do yourself a favor and bookmark Tubi, and you’ll always get a renewed sense of discovery, like the first time you watched a horror movie.
Cinderella’s Revenge (dir. Andy Edwards)
Let’s be honest: The most disappointing part of Disney’s Cinderella is the fact that Cinderella doesn’t exact fairytale justice upon her devil of a step family. Thankfully, we have Cinderella’s Revenge to correct this mistake, and correct it, it does in truly goretastic fashion!
This Cinderella doesn’t need to summon Pumpkinhead to dole out bloody vengeance. No, this Cinderella hops into her pumpkin chariot Tesla, and, with the guidance of Fairy Godmother Natasha Henstridge (seriously), revels in an unbridled slaughter of all who have wronged her!
Cinderella’s Revenge is a heartwarming take on the classic tale, and it’s written by Tom Jolliffe, who also brought us the likes of Jack and Jill (2021), When Darkness Falls (2022), Mega Lightning (2022), Tooth Fairy: The Last Extraction (2021), and Christmas with the Pups (2023). Enjoy!
The Brooklyn Butcher (dir. Stuart Kiczek & Joshua R. Pangborn)
While the movie hasn’t yet had its digital release, The Brooklyn Butcher is one of the most exciting slashers that premiered towards the end of the 2024 indie horror films’ festivals circuit, and I want to rev up excitement for it because I believe strongly in the work that Joshua R. Pangborn, Stuart Kiczek, and the other members of the Crewniverse at Sidekick Productions are doing, especially in terms of centering queer and fat characters in horror.
The Brooklyn Butcher unfolds in a New York high rise whose tenants hunker down in a panic as their building is preyed upon by a mysterious serial killer. But who is The Butcher? And what other sinister secrets are the residents hiding?
This was one of the most exciting directorial debuts I’ve seen in years, as Joshua R. Pangborn and Stuart Kiczek’s work is simultaneously campy and sincere, dark and lighthearted, twisted, mysterious, hilarious, and unapologetic. You’ll want to follow everything Sidekick Productions does, and if you enjoy Buffy or Doctor Who, check out their web series Skeleton Crew and Dr. Death!
Festival of the Living Dead (dir. The Soska Sisters)
The dead are always with us, and the omnipresence of the zombie sub-genre is a good reminder of that! If there are two things I love, it’s zombies and The Soska Sisters, and while I cannot wait for American Mary to return to life one day, it was a nice surprise to see the Twisted Twins tackling reanimated terrors.
Festival of the Living Dead tells the story of Ash, a direct descendant of Night of the Living Dead’s protagonist Ben, as she attends a festival with her friends in remembrance of the zombie attack from the 1968 movie.
The Soksas’ take on zombies is pretty original, and I hope more people start watching this movie in 2025!
Carnage for Christmas and Satranic Panic(dir. Alice Maio Mackay)
I previously covered Alice Maio Mackay’s Bad Girl Boogey, T-Blockers, and So Vam for Izzy’s Eerie Indies, but the Australian wunderkind was at it again in 2024 with the release of two new transgender and queer horror features. One is a Christmas slasher, and the other is a demonic cult musical. You have my full attention, Alice!
Carnage makes for a fun addition to your annual rotation of holiday horror with the story of a true crime podcaster who returns to her hometown to investigate a series of murders by a Santa mask-wearing killer. And Satranic Panic sees a group of friends teaming up for a buddy road trip across Australia as they seek to avenge their friend who was murdered in a hate crime at the hands of a group of demons.
Part of what makes every Alice Maio Mackay movie dazzle is the seamless and progressively cohesive creative partnerships between frequent collaborators like Ben Pahl Robinson, Cassie Hamilton, Lisa Fanto, Iris Mcerlean, Toshiro Glenn, and more. I can’t wait to see what comes next!
Stopmotion(dir. Robert Morgan)
Creepy with a capital C! I had a grand old time getting immersed in Robert Morgan’s debut feature that blends live action psychological terror with miniature animated horrors.
Finding your creative voice can be challenging, but it becomes an almost impossible task when you’re living in the shadow of an overbearing mother who can no longer create work on her own. Your hands become the vehicle for your mother’s voice, and you lose yourself in that process. It stops any progress, any forward motion you might want to make in life. And some people cannot handle that kind of isolated stasis.
Stopmotion is the story of what happens when that causes you to break. It’s unsettling and uncomfortable – a truly impressive debut and one of the most visually intriguing 2024 indie horror films!
Frogman (dir. Anthony Cousins)
The title says it all, and it’s the title that captured the imagination of this particular lover of mythology and folklore. A documentarian travels to a small town to track down the creature that traumatized him as a child: a famous local legend called the Frogman!
Part man, part frog, the Frogman slogs along in the woods, eyes a-bulgin’ and tongue all akimbo. He looks great, even against the found footage shaky cam, and the creature design is practical effect excellence.
Fans of found footage and practical effects will love Frogman!
What Were YOUR Favorite 2024 Indie Horror Films?
Those were just a few of the incredible 2024 indie horror films dished up for the annals. I hope in 2025, you’ll spend some time diving deep into movies that may not have had a theatrical release. You never know what you might discover!
Or, if you’re an indie horror filmmaker (or indie horror game developer, indie horror musician, indie horror author, or any other type of horror-focused creative!), I highly recommend you write to Lauren to let her know what you’re working on.
She chooses which indie horror films to feature/review from what lands in her inbox! And any projects that aren’t given a solo spotlight are still put in front of HorrorFam.com readers via her tri-annual inbox round-ups. (There’s another one happening on February 7th, so make sure you write to her by January 17th if you want to be a part of it!).
Let’s make 2025 a year of watching, creating, and supporting indie horror year-round!
Images were purchased via CineMaterial or via Isaiah Swanson.
