The oldest image in horror is a woman alone in a car, doors locked, something coming. Autonomous — the debut of Screamify’s Micro Horrors™ banner — takes that image and quietly rewires it. Because the woman trapped in the backseat, Erin Áine, is also the person who produced the whole thing.

Áine stars in and produced Autonomous alongside director and Big Squid partner Kyle Valle, and the difference shows. The self-driving car that won’t let her out (“Your ride knows the way. So does something else.”) could have been one more story about a woman with no control. Instead it’s made by a woman taking all of it.

With ‘Autonomous,’ Erin Áine Doesn’t Just Survive the Car — She Built It

Claiming Horror’s Newest Format

Vertical, short-form horror is the genre’s fastest-growing frontier, and — like every new frontier — it’s up for grabs. Áine is grabbing. “There's so much freedom and opportunity nowadays to create your own projects and not be stuck in one area of the filmmaking process, no matter who you are or your background or experience, and I am here for it.” she has said, and Autonomous is that sentence as a film: writer-producer-star, no permission requested.

It helps that the movie is genuinely good. Áine plays the dawning panic in close-up — the format puts her face inches from yours — and the blue-lit dread of that car interior is the kind of image that sticks. Screamify is pairing the launch with Behind the Screams, an original docuseries on the making of it.

Behind the Screams — Screamify’s original docuseries on the making of “Autonomous.”

Women are not just surviving horror’s new format — they’re defining it. Autonomous is streaming now under Micro Horrors™, and it’s the most exciting argument yet that the next scream queens will also be the ones calling action.