ScareFest Horror Film Festival

Overview

🎬 CALL FOR ENTRIES — THE SCAREFEST FILM FESTIVAL (LEXINGTON, KY) Horror • Paranormal • Dark Sci-Fi • Underground • Weird • Macabre The ScareFest Film Festival is the official film festival of ScareFest Weekend — Kentucky’s premier Horror, Paranormal & Fandom Convention — held annually at the Central Bank Center in Lexington, KY, drawing 30,000+ local, out-of-state, and international attendees. ScareFest is one of the largest conventions of its kind in the country, bridging horror, paranormal, and fandom culture — backed by a community of 80,000+ followers across social media. Every year we welcome celebrities from the big and small screen, paranormal personalities, artists, vendors, and performers… and at the heart of it all is the love of horror. This festival is built for filmmakers who want their work to be seen, felt, and celebrated by a crowd that came to be terrified. 🩸 WHAT WE’RE LOOKING FOR We want horror in all its forms — high art, high camp, and everything in between. We accept all sub-genres, including: Splatter • Slasher • Supernatural • Creature • Psychological Plus: horror comedy, documentary, dark sci-fi, experimental, and genre-benders. If your film is dark, creepy, bloody, eerie, strange, haunting, nasty, violent, unusual, weird, or macabre — we want to see it. 🎞️ PREMIERES & FRESH FILMS PREFERRED 👁️ WHY SUBMIT? Our screenings play to an enthusiastic crowd of horror lovers who want to discover new filmmakers and original work. This is a real audience, real reactions, and a weekend packed with horror culture, celebrity guests, paranormal programming, vendors, and fandom. We proudly support Kentucky indie filmmakers and student films.

Last updated Sep 13, 2026

Legitimacy Analysis

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Festival Details

FilmFreeway communityGold festival

• Filmmaker

  Found a new favorite, was able to visit on Friday. It was a BLAST!!!!!! Great fest, great communication.

• Filmmaker

  Still waiting on award winners? Not much communication.

• Filmmaker

  Jason-Christopher Mayer

• Filmmaker

  We were honored to screen our experimental short film No Grave For the Dead at Scarefest 2023! It was one of the biggest festivals we screened at all year, with tons of horror celebs, fun events, indie film panels and a plethora of vendor booths to shop. The screening went amazing too! The audience asked thought-provoking questions during our Q&A. We unfortunately couldn’t stay for the award show due to travel obligations, but we want to congratulate all the nominees and winners. We met some talented filmmakers and artists who we hope to keep in contact with in the future. Wes and the rest of the Scarefest team welcomed us to Kentucky with open arms and showed us a memorable weekend for the ages. We’ll 100% be submitting future films to this special film festival.

• Filmmaker

  Although, I wanted to, I was not able to attend this year. The communication was stellar. I always knew what was going on in a timely manner. Keep up the good work. Hope to see you next year.

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