The 2026 edition of San Francisco’s Unnamed Footage Festival kicked off on March 24 and runs through March 29, featuring its biggest lineup of found footage features and shorts ever. I’ve had an advance look at some of the features on tap and would like to recommend three that have upcoming screenings.
Following are official fest descriptions of the films, followed by my spoiler-free thoughts in italics.
For more information, visit https://unnamedfootagefestival.com/.
Distort 2: The Dead Among The Trees (2026, dir. Richard Waters) World Premiere
Not too long ago, a musician had a supernatural experience involving ghostly dogs and time-bending cassette tapes left for him in an Irish forest. Now, a documentary filmmaker brings the man back to the same forest to see just how real these experiences were, and to possibly save the woman who has been trapped there for 30 years.
Picking up right where the first film left off, Distort 2 builds upon the lore of the weeping man, the haunted tract of Irish forest, and the dark, hungry forces within. The film uses its incredible sound design to craft a haunting tale of folk horror with fascinating use of diegetic audio to make something truly unique.
Screens March 27.
This sequel to 2025’s Distort — reviewed here — opens with an excellent recap of that first entry, setting matters up nicely for viewers who haven’t yet seen it. Distort 2 does a super job of expanding on the world building established in the first installment, including the addition of two new characters and escalated dramatic tension. (Our featured image for this article is from Distort 2: The Dead Among the Trees.)
Wilderness Tapes (2025, dir. Brandon Walker)
Nearly a million smartphones and cameras are lost in the wilderness each year. For the first time in history, recovered footage from such devices is presented in a chilling anthology series.
Wilderness Tapes: Volume One chronicles a journey into an abandoned gold mine that goes wrong, plunging “Prospector Pete” into the depths of supernatural madness.
Screens March 28.
Wilderness Tapes: Volume One recalls the approach of classic hosted anthology series such as The Twilight Zone, Night Gallery, and Ghost Story/Circle of Fear. As a lifelong fan of those shows and the format, count me in! This first installment is a winner, following a flawed but likeable loner on an eerie, ill-advised solo cave exploration.
PRIMAL DARKNESS (2026, dir. Dillon Brown) World Premiere
With the Tahoe Joe trilogy complete, Dillon Brown (Tahoe Joe, Ghost, The Summer We Died) returns to found footage with his most intense film yet. Hoping to kick off the second season of his series with a bang, hunting influencer Cole Harrington travels into the wilderness of Northern Nevada in search of a mountain lion that’s been menacing local livestock, but when he finds a camera belonging to a pair of missing hikers his hunting expedition becomes a fight for survival with something much more dangerous than a simple wildcat.
While his Tahoe Joe films embrace the goofiness of the regional cryptid, PRIMAL DARKNESS is pure horror, using the isolation and emptiness of Northern Nevada — and the area’s numerous abandoned mines — to craft a bleak tale of survival that is not to be missed.
Screens March 27
Brown, who also stars, delivers one of his strongest features with Primal Darkness, and fans who enjoyed his Bigfoot trilogy will find this feature to be darker and more horrifying. The creature makeup and effects are quite impressive.
FROGMAN RETURNS (2026, dir. Anthony Cousins)
In the sequel to his hit creature feature, Anthony Cousins (Frogman, Scare Package) delivers another buffet of frights and frogs in this creature-feature sequel. Featuring new and familiar faces alike, FROGMAN RETURNS picks up where Frogman left off. Delving into the lore of the Loveland Frogman, this sequel cranks everything up to eleven, guaranteeing a froggy fantasy filled with more frogmen than you can wave a magic wand at.
Frogs aside, Cousins’ background as a cinematographer shines through in this film FROGMAN RETURNS adopts a far different style than its predecessor, eschewing the tracking lines and static of a Hi8 for crisp, digital look, that lets it show off its amazing practical effects creatures.
Hail Frogman!
Screens March 27
Cousins opens up the world of his film more widely than usual for found footage shockers, including featuring persons-on-the-street and locals of Loveland, Ohio, in different locations. One big thumbs up for how he handles what at first seem like questionable editing choices in a found footage film — giving away any more than this would be an injustice to this well thought-out work. Finally, Frogman delivers one of the more intriguing third acts of a found footage film in recent memory.
