The Overlook Film Festival is a 4-day celebration of all things horror held in America’s most haunted city, New Orleans. Each spring, genre fans and cinephiles from the world over convene in the heart of the French Quarter, home to countless apparition sightings, voodoo legends, vampire curses and even some lore related to our namesake, horror fiction’s most frightening creation. The festival is produced in partnership with The Prytania Theatres.

Presenting superior film programming with an expanded focus on experiential events, the festival showcases exciting work in new and classic independent horror cinema alongside the latest in interactive and live shows for a fully immersive weekend. As a summer camp for genre fans, The Overlook is a community event bringing the best of horror in all its forms to an enthusiastic and appreciative audience within an intimate and inspirational environment.

The Overlook has been listed as one of MovieMaker Magazine’s Best Genre Festivals in the world every year of its inception and has been called “one of the world’s best festivals” by FANGORIA and “America’s most exciting new genre fest” by IndieWIRE.

Past guests to our events also include Nicolas Cage, Jim Jarmusch, John Goodman, Roger Corman, Robert Rodriguez, Eli Roth, Taika Waititi, Ari Aster, Ana Lily Amirpour, Paul Scheer, Roxanne Benjamin, Darren Lyn Bousman, Simon Barrett and Jason Blum in addition to our illustrious advisory board, who include Elijah Wood, Karyn Kusama, Leigh Whannell, Mick Garris, Larry Fessenden and Joe Dante along with industry luminaries from the Sundance Film Festival, Toronto Intl. Film Festival, Blumhouse Productions, CAA, Endeavor Content, Neon, 30 West, XYZ Films and SpectreVision.

As part of the virtual collaborative initiative NIGHTSTREAM, a digital genre festival created in the wake of the pandemic, The Overlook spearheaded the virtual events component which included John Carpenter, Nia DaCosta, Mike Flanagan, Mary Harron, David Dastmalchian, Ernest Dickerson, John Landis, Issa Lopez, David Lowery, Greg Nicotero, Peaches Christ and many more.