Some festivals start with a business plan. The Nashville Horror Film Festival started with an absence — a city that loved horror and had nowhere to put that love. “Honestly, three years ago, almost three years ago now, we came to Nashville. We're both filmmakers ourselves. And we saw, I mean, because we love horror, we saw that Nashville didn't have a horror film festival. And so to see that pocket and to fill it has been amazing,” co-founder Chuckie Fuoco said in an on-camera interview published in the festival's press kit.

Festival co-founders Wolf Turner and Chuckie Fuoco at Screamify’s Micro Horrors premiere party. (Video: Screamify / Pillarbox Media)

Fuoco founded the festival in 2024 with fellow filmmaker Wolf Turner, and its third edition runs October 2–4, 2026 at Regal Green Hills, opening Friday night with the Screamify VIP Party. Screamify — the independent horror streamer — announced this week it's returning as sponsor for a second consecutive year. But talk to the founders and the sponsorship isn't the story they lead with. The people are.

The Two Filmmakers Who Gave Nashville Horror a Home — and the Community That Showed Up

“I honestly think my favorite part is the community. Building this community in Nashville, it's been something that hasn't had kind of a home. … I think Nashville has always had it. You just need a place to actually meet up and have it,” Fuoco said.

That community keeps answering. Submissions have roughly tripled over last year, and Turner talks about the filmmakers who send in work like a fan, not a gatekeeper: “I feel like every year, everyone just steps it up. … The gore, the love, the horror, the effects. It's unbelievable.” And: “I always like, okay, you can't get better than this. And then they freaking top it.”

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The festival’s home: Regal Green Hills in Nashville.

The home they built is already changing lives. At the 2025 festival, Trent Duncan's Axes and Os won both Best Overall Feature and Best Director; Screamify licensed the film — it's streaming there now — and then greenlit Game Night: Survive the Slasher, a 32-episode Micro Horrors series from Duncan that premiered July 11 with a red-carpet party at Nashville's Sidecar Bar. A regional festival win became a career. That's what a room full of your people can do.

Filmmakers who want in can find the festival on FilmFreeway. And if you're in Nashville in October: your people are at Regal Green Hills.

Photos: Jeremy Harris / Screamify images; interview still: Screamify / Pillarbox Media.