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Aidan Leary and C.R. Thompson were given two weeks to write a horror script, three months to prepare it, and 11 days to shoot it. What resulted is an uncanny look behind the curtain of a sinister public-access children’s show. When I interviewed Joe Swanberg a few months back, he was in the midst of releasing five independently produced horror films, each made back-to-back using the same crews — not dissimilar to the way many TV shows are shot. Using the teachings of Roger Corman, Swanberg recruited five up-and-coming filmmakers to spearhead these projects, knowing full well that they would be the most likely to jump at the opportunity. But he also recognized they would be best equipped to adhere to his trademark low budgets and expedited shooting schedules required of the productions. One of those filmmakers was Aidan Leary, who teamed up with his college filmmaking buddy C.R. Thompson to craft a delectable horror nightmare that plays like a mix of Mister Roger’s Neighborhood and Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared (2011). The film, Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round (2024), immediately developed a cult fanbase, announcing itself as an important entry in the wave of nostalgia-based horror that has been rising in popularity thanks to properties like Five Nights at Freddy’s. Aidan Leary and C.R. Thompson pitched the idea that would become Monkey’s Magic Merry Go Round when they were only a few months out of college. Like any freshly post-collegiate kids would, they cited Sigmund Freud’s essay The Uncanny as a main inspiration behind their concept. Leary pushes up against Ernst Jentsch’s theory that horror is rooted in the “fear of the unknown” because Freud, in his essay, describes the uncanny as “nothing new or foreign, but something familiar and old — established in the mind that has been estranged only by the process of repression.” Using this theory, the two college roommates set out to coalesce the things that scared them into one cohesive horror plot about a forgotten children’s TV show. Tune in below to listen to my full conversation with Aidan Leary and C.R. Thompson. We talk about their upbringing as filmmakers, our favorite baseball teams, and some of the horror films that influenced their nostalgia-induced nightmare. Give it a listen.

Banfitch’s second foray in found footage finds him exploring the darkest corners of the subgenre and questioning if art can be a coping mechanism after the loss of a loved one. I have long struggled to come up with an answer when asked “What’s the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?” My shorthand in high school was Halloween or Insidious, before graduating to more prestigious yet equally common picks The Exorcist and The Shining in college. And while it’s true that these films are all among my very favorites, the fact is that I have never really been too afraid of what most horror films have to offer, though I still claim the genre as my favorite. I of course found Freddy Krueger and Chucky terrifying as a kid, but grew out of that fear early enough when I realized they crack jokes as often as they kill people. In the years since, there have certainly been times when I’ve looked away from gore. I've bolted upright during jumpscares quite often, sure, but there are only a handful of films in the genre that have truly gnawed at me; the kind of films that keep you awake at night or, even worse, follow you into the daylight. It isn’t lost on me that what each person finds to be scary is drastically different. Usually the things we fear most are linked to some sort of early trauma as a kid; what life experiences we encountered or what we were allowed to watch that we shouldn’t have. I remember being more afraid of 48 Hour Mystery, the CBS program my aunt would have on every time she babysat me, than any of the conventional horror media I was exposed to growing up. What really got under my skin were the things that actually happened — or were at the very least filmed and edited to look like they had actually happened — and the routine retelling of those events. This is why I consider one of the scariest films I’ve seen in my lifetime to be Lake Mungo, a haunting Australian mockumentary about 16-year-old Alice Palmer’s family uncovering dark secrets and encountering the seemingly paranormal in the years after she drowned at a nearby dam. Its unique portrayal of grief and loss has kept the film as my go-to answer since I first saw it eight years ago. In keeping with the varying levels of what one finds “scary,” no one I’ve ever shown this film to has shared that sentiment. Maybe this is because it isn’t the “fun” kind of scary. Lake Mungo portrays a deeply-felt melancholy and emptiness that could be compared to other favorites like Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse and Ari Aster’s Hereditary, though no other film has filled me with the immense dread that Joel Anderson’s sole mysterious masterwork has. That is, until I watched Tinsman Road. No film I’ve seen in the past decade has scared me as much as Robbie Banfitch’s newest release. It follows the two remaining members of the Lyle family, Leslie and Robbie, a mother and son who stay together in their New Jersey family home after their daughter/sister Noelle goes missing. Leslie is convinced that her daughter died in the woods and that the house is now haunted by a non-malicious Noelle. She takes solace in the presence of her daughter. Robbie is not convinced by his mother’s paranormal claims, but he does believe that his sister may be dead and sets out to make a documentary in which he tries to discover her whereabouts. The film is a nightmarish found footage slow burn, not unlike Banfitch’s last polarizing outing with The Outwaters (2022). It may sound like your standard Blair Witch-inspired fare, but it was a visceral viewing experience for me, prompting me to think back on some of the most horrific days I’ve ever lived through.

Since 2018, Joe Meredith has been crafting an elaborate series of short films set in a post-apocalyptic world overtaken by the fictional “Havoc” virus. Each film explores the lives of those affected by the virus, whether they be mutant creatures, half-assimilated humans, or the unsuspecting victims of both aforementioned groups. When Meredith began releasing the films, loosely referred to as the “EonCorp” series after the evil corporation within the extended universe, he did so by posting the trailers on YouTube with a link in the description to buy DVDs on his Storenvy in order to watch. South Mill District and Teratomorph, the first two official entries in the series, have since been rereleased on his channel to a few thousand views each. It is my understanding that his third short, Variant, was also released on YouTube but was removed by moderators for gore and sexual content. Around the time Meredith began uploading his films, he also made the switch from digital cinematography to the more analog brand of horror for which his films have become known. Variant and Variant II are tried-and-true SOV films, even if they lean more into hard sci-fi than overt horror. This past year he released two additional films in the series. The first, Ataraxia, is a collection of found footage documenting the aftermath of a massive storm that caused mutant aberrations to emerge from the floodwaters on the eastern shore of Lyla Bay. The film is a step forward in Meredith’s continued mastery of atmosphere, trading some of the stop-motion and video game aesthetics of his previous work for a far more sinister tone of desolate eeriness. This tone was only refined with the release of last year’s Harvest Brood, the first of the films to showcase events taking place prior to the alien war hinted at in earlier entries. The film is set in 2006 — just on the cusp of the “Havoc” virus spreading to become a worldwide epidemic — and documents the events of a three-day killing spree brought on by a mutant lurking around the streets of Briar, Alabama. Released mere days before Halloween, Harvest Brood became the filmmaker’s most watched work to date — 30,000 views and counting — due in no small part to the world-building he had done in the years prior and the much-anticipated premiere event he created on his channel. It is almost immediately apparent that Harvest Brood is cut from a different cloth than the previous “EonCorp” entries. The first tell is its documentary format, which reveals itself after about two minutes of crisp autumnal b-roll. A morbid 911 call is followed by talking head testimonials with former detectives and deputies recounting two traumatic murder scenes they discovered on October 28, 2006. The interviews are intercut with crime scene photos — some of Meredith’s goriest work to date — accompanied by an ambient soundscape and a recurring snapshot sound that recalls the iconic flashbulb from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Then the film breaks this format, cutting to a narrative account of a third murder on the same night. The mix of faux documentary and ’80s slasher is jarring, but Meredith is a delicate craftsman. Over the 53-minute runtime, he deftly weaves the threads between true-crime TV and grindhouse gorefest before eventually settling back into his comfort zone: apocalyptic sci-fi creature feature. I had a great conversation with Joe about a month ago where we talked about his homemade filmmaking tactics, the impact of analog horror YouTube web series Marble Hornets, and all of the work that goes into the making of just one of his practical effects. You can listen to that here, and you should absolutely check out his films on his YouTube channel or on his Storenvy.

“Nobody can tell you how to make your movie, and you’re the only one who can make it happen at the end of the day. So, stop waiting around for other people to give you permission because they never will.” These were the parting words filmmaker Tess Nealon Raskin left me with during our conversation some weeks ago, and she seems to be practicing what she’s preached. Having released two short films last year and having already directed at least one more in 2026, Raskin is wasting no time waiting for someone to greenlight her post-collegiate filmmaking career. Her films confront a number of taboo topics (the sexualization of young women, traumatic brain injuries, eating disorders) in ways that feel at once uncomfortable and relatable. The stripped-back camcorder aesthetic is what truly makes Raskin’s shorts feel grounded and lived-in, as if Giuseppe Andrews had guest-directed a few episodes of Degrassi. Earlier this year, Split Tooth’s Brooks Wieszczek covered the micro-budget DIY films of Roy Gentes. Raskin has been a vital part of Gentes’ extensive filmography, consisting of 25 short films and one mid-length feature all released in the past six years. The two met in college, around the time Raskin released her first short film Bummer (2024) to less-than-enthusiastic feedback from her classmates. “I think it completely killed any people-pleasing instinct I might have had toward that community,” Raskin said of the experience. That disappointment paired with the creative synergy she felt she had with Gentes led to their collaborative directorial effort Girls with Boyfriends (2025), a film that abandons nearly all common filmmaking conventions in favor of an “anti-film school” method of storytelling. Raskin builds upon these themes with Sicky (2025), a film that abandons the locked-down, mostly single location practices of Girls with Boyfriends for a more frantic and ambitious tale of a young woman who severs ties with her best friend after a car accident leaves her with a traumatic brain injury. This injury impacts her personality, her relationships, and her rotisserie chicken diet. The reception to the film has been more polarizing than that of Girls with Boyfriends, but Raskin hardly takes audience perception into account anymore. Sure, she still religiously checks Letterboxd reviews (as I’d imagine we all do), but the young filmmaker is no longer willing to let those critiques stifle her creative voice. “When I’m in the mood to make something, I don’t want to delay when that can happen. I wanna just go do it. It actually stresses me out and devastates me to think about waiting around for other people to approve the ‘right’ version of the thing that I wanna make.” Listen to the newest episode of Make More Movies here and head to Split Tooth Media to read the full interview. Split Tooth's Summer 2026 Double Issue is also now available, featuring interviews with filmmakers Joe Swanberg and Tess Nealon Raskin, our Guide to Mumblecore, plus Girl Trouble's Bon Von Wheelie! Order at our Ko-fi store: https://ko-fi.com/s/5df933982d

Order Split Tooth's new double zine with Joe Swanberg's interview as a cover story: https://ko-fi.com/s/5df933982d Twenty years ago, Joe Swanberg completed his first rough cut of Hannah Takes The Stairs at 6 a.m. His blog post from August 19, 2006 on the film’s official website reads, “I'm going to watch it tonight, make some tweaks, and then step away from it for a while, let it sit, then come back in for the kill.” At this point, the term mumblecore had already been coined by Andrew Bujalski and Eric Masunaga — despite it being despised by the other filmmakers to which the term applied. SXSW was the pioneering festival for the DIY film movement, having already premiered two films by Bujalski and Swanberg and one feature by the Duplass brothers. But many cite the then-upcoming Hannah as the true jumping-off point for many of the movement’s future stars. No one, even Swanberg himself, could have known the impact this single film would have had on the next 20 years of cinema. Now, 20 years and roughly 20 films later, Joe Swanberg’s The Sun Never Sets is hitting theaters. The film follows Wendy (Dakota Fanning), a construction worker in Alaska whose life is uprooted when she has to choose between Jack (Jake Johnson), her older divorced boyfriend with children of his own, and Chuck (Cory Michael Smith), her newly resurfaced ex-boyfriend. The film marks Swanberg’s first directorial effort in almost seven years — quite the hiatus for someone who once famously directed seven films in one year. That doesn’t mean the filmmaker hasn’t kept busy. Since 2020, he has starred in eight films and produced seven — including a slate of five horror films by up-and-coming directors for Screambox and Yale Entertainment — as well as operating a video rental store, launching his own VHS tape label, and even starting a (now defunct) streaming service. He has remained as prolific as ever, though many were left wondering when he would make a true return to the director’s chair. For a man who had been appearing at film festivals nonstop for a decade straight, he hadn’t had a film play at a festival since Win It All premiered at SXSW in March 2017. The Sun Never Sets proves that Swanberg hasn’t skipped a beat in his time away. The film has resonated with festival audiences and further showcases the director’s ability to make actors feel right at home on his laidback, “anything goes”-style sets. His newest film is his most mature effort yet, but it also manages to play the hits: it’s about a young woman at a transitional point in her life dealing with the affection and attention of multiple men. This should sound familiar to anyone who has been following Swanberg’s career since Hannah. It’s still improvisational, but the sense of scale and emotional depth in The Sun Never Sets is new territory for the director. If anything, Swanberg has added to his toolbox thanks to his time spent on set with the young directors whose projects he has been acting in and producing. And audiences seem more game now than ever to meet him on his level. Now that he has released a new film, it feels appropriate to look back on the accomplishments of the first 15 years of his career. Swanberg’s films have had the chance to live on their own for years now, especially during his hiatus. I had the pleasure of chatting with Swanberg about his latest filmmaking endeavors, the impact of his work on younger filmmakers, and the current state of the film industry. He also offered some very helpful advice for the creators out there whose films are just learning to walk.