Short of the Week
With less than a week left to submit your horror (or horror-adjacent) short to our Nightmare Shorts competition, we’re thrilled to announce the final member of our jury: Rob Savage.
The filmmaker behind two standout S/W-selected horror shorts, Salt and Dawn of the Deaf, Savage’s stock rose rapidly in 2020 when his two-minute viral video investigating strange noises in his attic led to Host, the 60-minute Zoom-based Shudder Original. Since then, he’s gone on to direct three features, all horror films, with the latest set for release in theaters in early October 2026.
Photo by Jeff Spicer/Getty Images for BFI
Full Bio
Rob Savage’s latest film, OTHER MOMMY, starring Jessica Chastain is releasing wide theatrically on October 9th from Universal and Blumhouse/Atomic Monster. Rob last directed the Stephen King adaptation of The Boogeyman for 21 Laps and Twentieth Century Studios, starring Sophie Thatcher, David Dastmalchian & Chris Messina. This film was released in June 2023. At the start of the pandemic in 2020, Savage wrote, directed, and released the feature film Host. The film still has a 99% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and many considered it the best horror film of the year.
Savage joins our previously announced jurors: Caleb Phillips, the filmmaker behind the online horror phenomenon Other Side of the Box, whose debut feature, Imposters, premiered at SXSW in 2026; and Nikyatu Jusu, the director of the acclaimed Sundance short, Suicide by Sunlight, whose debut feature, Nanny, won the U.S. Dramatic Grand Jury Prize at the festival in 2022.
With submissions open until Wednesday, September 30, there’s not much time left to get your horror short in front of some of the most exciting names working in genre filmmaking. The winner will be selected by our three-person jury and announced in early October, before being featured on Short of the Week in time for Halloween.
So, if you’ve got a horror – or horror-adjacent – short ready to be released online, there’s still time to submit. Head to the link below to enter.