The Magic of Horror

The Magic of Horror celebrates all kinds of films, screenplays, and art in the horror genre. Creepy creatures, psychological thrillers, Gothic tales, supernatural terrors, slashers... we think they all have the magic to scare the pants off of genre fans! Every submission receives the initial jury scorecard and judge’s notes. 2022 SPECIAL CONTEST! Every year we put in a special contest just for fun. (We even did a “Give Us Your Worst Film” contest before.) This year the Special Contest theme is SCARY EVIL PETS! There are three categories for this special competition: Pets in Costumes, Mock Movie Posters, and Mock Movie Trailers of animal-themed horror films. (See our photos for examples.) These submissions get extra points from the jury on creativity, so go out there and have some fun with photos or videos of your pets! The Winners will receive a special trophy befitting for the theme! REGULAR SUBMISSION CATEGORIES: Of course, we have our standard competitions too. There are no "created by" time frame, debut status, or even publicly released film restrictions for submissions in these categories. Feature Films Short Films Feature Screenplays Short Screenplays Film Trailers Movie Posters Horror Artwork Selected films, trailers, movie posters, and artwork will be shown on-screen at our live, two-day event Attending filmmakers and artists will be invited to participate in a Q&A session at the end of their project’s screening block. Screenplay Finalists will be invited to participate in our “Script Talk” session at the festival to tell the audience about their work. The event ends with the awards ceremony and we also announce the Audience Choice Awards voted on by the festival attendees. AWARDS SHOW VIDEO: We will also be premiering our 2022 Awards Show Video online during (or shortly after) the live event in order to share the love with everyone who could not be there in person. We NEVER show full films in this online show. However, all film finalists will be required to provide a trailer for their film, otherwise a short teaser clip will be cut to be shown to our virtual audience and used for promotions. (Don’t worry, we don’t give away spoilers.) You can see our previous awards shows on our new YouTube channel: 2021 Awards - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L-VMkhaelY 2020 Awards - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAc-ocUhAps OUR MISSION IS TO PROMOTE INDEPENDENT HORROR! We continue to promote our annual selections for many years on our social media, including making announcements when a film is released to the public and where our followers can find it. We also periodically update the selection archives on our website with links to news on any project that participated in the festival. (Films that have been released, screenplays that went into production, etc...) We encourage both past and present Selections to keep us updated so we can help spread the word!