Anomaly - The Rochester Genre Film Festival is back for its eighth year, with a fresh selection of “New Release” films on the shelves! Step inside “Eyeball Video” and join us for 15 programs curated by our staff, including 13 feature films and 42 short films during all 5 days! Stop in and experience our wide selection as you treat yourself to the best genre cinema from around the world, November 11-15, 2026 in downtown Rochester, NY! But remember to rewind your tapes… or else.
TICKETS / PASSES
Individual Tickets: $13 General Admission
($11 for students and seniors)Full Festival Pass: $130
Discounts available on select films/tickets/passes for students and seniors.
See Ticket Details for more information.
VENUES
Our 2026 Festival “Eyeball Video” Store & Theatre: The Little Theatre (Theatre 1): 240 East Ave, Rochester, NY 14604. PARKING INFO
Thursday, November 12: Zu: Warriors of the Magic Mountain screening is at The Dryden Theatre: 900 East Ave, Rochester, NY 14607. PARKING INFO
Other Event locations vary.
Never been to Anomaly before? Read our 2026 FAQ if you want to know what you’re getting yourself into.
Click/tap a poster to jump to a film program. • Scroll down for full list of films.
Jump to a day: WEDNESDAY 11/11 • THURSDAY 11/12 • FRIDAY 11/13 • SATURDAY 11/14 • SUNDAY 11/15
Full Festival Passholders: Pass Pickup & Baked Potato Bar
5:00-5:45pm (directly preceding Kung Fu Deadly)
Location: The Little Theatre (Theatre 1 Lobby)
Come pickup (and decorate!) your pass, mingle with your fellow film-buffs, and enjoy a complimentary baked potato bar before we kickoff opening night! (Passes can still be picked up all festival long.)
FESTIVAL PASSHOLDERS ONLY!
Kung Fu Deadly
A crowd-pleasing supernatural adventure comedy.
Childhood friends turned professional pest exterminators Danny and Frank cross paths with the enigmatic Lian, a Taoist guardian hunting down an ancient jiangshi (an undead creature from Chinese folklore). Together, they set out to put an end to the menace in the only way they know how: extermination.
A Dublin-set supernatural comedy that evokes classic Hong Kong horror movies from the eighties and nineties, Kung Fu Deadly is an entertaining ode to the power of friendship and kicking ass (not necessarily in that order) More details & tickets
PRECEDED BY
Endzgiving
This is gonna be Will's last Friendsgiving.
USA / 2024 / 11 mins
Content Warnings: blood, gore, violence
Red Snow
A chilly Christmas tale of family, blood, and monsters.
Johanna is a teen with a deep love of sparkling vampires — and a deep resentment for her dysfunctional family. Tonight she thinks her biggest challenge will be making it through Christmas dinner, but the evening turns deadly as a Santa-suited bloodsucker crashes the festivities and begins enjoying his own kind of holiday feast.
Instead of the romantic fantasy she had imagined, Johanna now must fight a middle-aged monster, a toxic vampire hunter, a morbid home health aid, and her own flesh-and-blood as surviving the season takes a turn for the literal. More details & tickets
Finland | Sweden | Estonia
2026 / 1 hr 46 mins
In Finnish with English subtitles
Content Warnings: blood, death or dying, gore, pregnancy/childbirth, racism and racial slurs, sexism and misogyny, violence, body horror
PRECEDED BY
Gimme
On the first night of Hanukkah, a grandfather and his estranged granddaughter are pulled into a sinister game of dreidel.
USA / 2025 / 14 mins
Content Warnings: blood, violence
Pre-Movie Outing
5:00-7:00pm (directly preceding Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain)
Location & Details: Three Heads Brewing (186 Atlantic Ave, Rochester, NY 14607)
Just a few blocks from The Dryden Theatre, join us at Three Heads Brewing! Have a beer (passholders get $1 off anything on tap), play movie-themed trivia, and mingle with your fellow festival-goers! Food Truck Reservoir Dog'z will be on site slinging hot dogs (vegetarian & meat options).
Zu: Warriors from the Magic Mountain
A supernatural wuxia fantasy in 35mm.
The inspiration for Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China, this classic early 80s swordplay fantasy epic is what started it all. During a Chinese civil war in the 1740s, forces of good and evil face off in the Zu Mountains and, with no short supply of magic (lasers, flying swords, witches, sorcerers, and demons!), battle through the air and across mountains.
Tsui Hark's film finds its charm in the telling of spectacle-filled myth on a meager budget, where dazzling visuals and over-the-top stylistics make for a wild, wild ride.
Screening at The Dryden Theatre, on a 35mm film print from the George Eastman Museum collection. More details & tickets
PRECEDED BY
DAGON
A stop motion animation short film freely inspired by the story of the same name by cult author H.P. Lovecraft. In 1919 San Francisco, a man is standing on the ledge of a building ready to jump. Desperate, he relives in his memories the absurd and shocking episode that led him to the brink of suicide: the encounter with the monstrous and mythological Great Old One, DAGON.
Italy / 2026 / 6 mins
Content Warnings: suicide
ALSO PRECEDED BY
Rainbow War
Three kingdoms, floating separately in space, can each see the other nearby kingdoms but have no means to communicate or visit. Each has developed a fanatical obsession for a specific color for clothing, architecture, and even plant life: one blue, one red, one golden. A forbidden inter-kingdom romance and a war of conquest ensues when a means of travel between the kingdoms is abruptly found.
This short film was created for Expo 86, the World Fair in Vancouver in 1986. Screening on a 16mm film print from the George Eastman Museum collection.
Canada / 1986 / 20 mins
Platypus
A lo-fi, horror-drone dreamscape on Super 8.
Kimberly, a young schoolgirl in a small town, secretly dreams of the masked killer Platypus terrorizing the area. But nobody believes her, and the dreams are becoming more vivid, more violent, and ever closer to home. More details & tickets
USA / 2026 / 1 hr 25 mins
Content Warnings: blood, death or dying, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, addiction, gore, pornographic content, violence
PRECEDED BY
Nail-Biter
On the eve of her eighteenth birthday, anxious nail-biter Amy Heller confronts her overbearing mother about their so-called family curse, a finger-devouring creature that preys on those who bite their nails, just as the monster arrives to claim her as its next victim.
USA / 2025 / 18 mins
Content Warnings: gory sound design, body horror, blood, dismemberment
Freaky & Funny Friday Shorts
Short stories... with long shadows. From student films to professional productions, and covering a delightful and dark variety of genres, we invite you to gaze upon the titles hidden deep within in our shelves. See what stories stay with you. For tonight… or for eternity.
(14 short films•1 hr 52 mins) More details & tickets
Film still from Dormant
Dormant
Night. Snow. A red car. A taxi driver picks up a silent stranger and drives her along an empty road. To the hypnotic words of H. P. Lovecraft's Beyond the Wall of Sleep, familiar reality slowly begins to dissolve, revealing a vast and ancient presence beyond human perception.
Russian Federation / 2026 / 6 mins
In Russian with English subtitles
Content Warnings: flashing lights
Ghost Light
A surreal short film that reminds us we all carry a light within us.
USA / 2025 / 4 mins
Content Warnings: N/A
Check Please
Two headstrong Koreans can't agree on who's treating who to dinner, causing their casual restaurant outing to spiral into a martial arts deathmatch.
USA / 2025 / 10 mins
Content Warnings: blood, violence
Breeder
A woman on the fence about having kids becomes hunted in her home by a demonic horse-man of Filipino folklore...
USA / 2026 / 8 mins
Content Warnings: drinking, pregnancy, body horror, blood, religious trauma, goo
Red Razor on Soft Skin
A giallo horror film about Benny Lazar, a timid son forced by his mother Moira to get a shave and a haircut from a mysterious barber. What ensues is a technicolor nightmare of love, hate, betrayal, and self-destruction.
USA / 2026 / 14 mins
Content Warnings: blood
Blindsided
A blind schoolteacher struggles to survive through a nightmarish night when an alien spaceship crashes and unleashes a monstrous predator. This unique horror short film features an all low-vision cast and places the audience in the POV of a blind protagonist who is only able to hear what happens around her.
USA / 2025 / 8 mins
Content Warnings: loud noises, violence
Vape Glow
Guided by the POV of a dying vape light, Mike puffs around a vacation rental, illuminating it during a strange blackout.
USA / 2026 / 5 mins
Content Warnings: flashing lights, nudity, gore, violence, horror goo, smoking
Final Girl
A girl wakes up hungover after a Halloween party, oblivious to the killer hunting her down and how she’s the only surviving partygoer.
USA / 2026 / 3 mins
Content Warnings: blood, alcohol use
Get Into the Spirit
While attempting to communicate with a handsome ghost haunting their house, two husbands discover there are many ways a spirit can reach out from beyond the grave.
USA / 2026 / 5 mins
Content Warnings: N/A
Prey For Us
After a house party, a woman leaves with a charming stranger, only to share unsettling truths that shatter their perceptions of each other.
USA / 2025 / 7 mins
Content Warnings: blood, violence, misogyny
A Study on the Monstrous Feminine
An experimental piece in four parts focusing on the idea of the females descent into a monster through puberty and sexual awakening that challenges the cultural mythology of womanhood, gender, and femininity in relation to monstrosity.
USA / 2025 / 15 mins
Content Warnings: blood, gore, implied sexual assault, flashing lights, shadow genital violence
Brian Won't Wear Condoms
An alternative contraceptive procedure tests the relationship between a wellness influencer and her skeptical best friend.
USA / 2025 / 12 mins
Content Warnings: blood, mutilation, gore
CHÄIR
Carl just wanted to sit down. The chair had other plans.
USA / 2025 / 7 mins
Content Warnings: blood, flashing lights, satanism
Knifeman
Mild-mannered IRS Agent Horatio Hunt must suit up and become a hero to save his city from a sinister sorceress. A dark and twisted horror take on classic tokusatsu media like Ultraman and Power Rangers, exploring perspective when it comes to justice, and the implicit undercurrent of fascism in superheroes.
USA / 2025 / 15 mins
Content Warnings: flashing lights, violence, gunshots, blood, gore, disembowelment
No Rest for the Wicked
A forebodingly romantic folk horror.
In the 19th century Faroe Islands, young Baldur leads a quiet, solitary life as a fisherman and the sole provider for himself and his widowed mother. He does nothing to stand apart from their isolated, conservatively religious community until the appearance of ruggedly handsome whaler Helge awakens emotions in Baldur he’s never felt before.
Their mutual attraction turns to illicit romance as their relationship brings some much longed for excitement into Baldur’s life, and with it the hope for an adventure that might finally break him free from an oppressive existence. Then tragedy strikes, and Baldur turns to unnatural and dark methods to prove the bond formed between them can endure through anything. Maybe even transcending the boundaries of life itself. More details & tickets
Denmark, Iceland, Faroe Islands / 2026
1 hr 43 mins
In Danish and Faroese with English subtitles
Content Warnings: blood, violence, sexual content, body horror
PRECEDED BY
The Bones Exist
In the unforgiving wilderness of 1850s Alta California, a dwindling group of gold prospectors encounters a feral boy who forces the men to confront the horrors lurking in the woods and the sins of their past.
USA / 2026 / 15 mins
Content Warnings: disembowelment, blood, gunshots, flashing lights, gore
Strange & Spooky Saturday Shorts
Bite-sized tales from storytellers near and far. Something for everyone… as long as you like strange and spooky short films of the genre persuasion, with a wide variety of styles, tones, and perspectives. Laugh, cower, feast your eyes - we’ve got it all.
(14 short films•1 hr 38 mins) More details & tickets
Film still from XOLO
Tasty Bones
Out at a campfire late at night, a man drunkenly stumbles to the edge of the woods to relieve himself. As he does, he starts to absentmindedly whistle. Something in the woods whistles back.
USA / 2025 / 6 mins
Content Warnings: N/A
All Eyes On Me
After meeting a strange man, Aya's world changes before her eyes. She follows a strange man in order to figure our what has happened to her and her world.
USA / 2023 / 3 mins
Content Warnings: N/A
The Feast of the Flies
During a dinner with her mother, a young fly girl moves away from her plate, unwilling to eat what has been served. As she distances herself from the plate and her mother, she encounters a new kind of food that, once tasted, will expose her to maternal rejection.
Colombia / 2025 / 5 mins
In Spanish with English subtitles
Content Warnings: violence, food noises, bug sounds
Before the Sun
Between night and dawn, a 200-year-old vampire’s confession unfolds. Through handcrafted performance, haunted production design, and shifting light, Before the Sun depicts a quiet reckoning with the past, and a choice to step into the light.
Canada / 2025 / 5 mins
Content Warnings: death
machina.
AI is here, and it is eating itself. Machina is not a technology movie. It is about the breakdown of a faith and power structure we are already living in.
USA / 2026 / 6 mins
Content Warnings: flashing lights, gore, body horror
Bootstrapped
Las Cosas Que Brillan
A curious trans mermaid defies her mother’s warnings to venture up to the surface, only to discover the world above is not what she dreamt.
USA / 2025 / 12 mins
Content Warnings: violence
Gobbledygook
A puppet girl encounters an other worldly entity through her Television set with every click of the remote.
USA / 2025 / 12 mins
Content Warnings: puppet vomit
Happy
During a boring visit to her grandmother's house, Cárol discovers a unique doll to kill time with. But she soon realizes that, in that house, she isn't the only one who knows how to have fun.
Spain / 2026 / 7 mins
In Spanish with English subtitles
Content Warnings: blood, child murder, taxidermy, gore
My Dinner with Victor
Jimmy still has a crush on his childhood best friend Victor. When the two finally meet after a long absence, a cultural mix-up leads to hilarious -- and deadly -- consequences.
Canada, Hong Kong / 2026 / 10 mins
Content Warnings: N/A
The Chosen
Reed is troubled by a vision forcing him to do bad things, but nobody believes him. Maybe this new therapist will understand?
USA / 2025 / 9 mins
Content Warnings: blood, self-harm, child harm, child death
Web
Lola has a very particular bedtime routine.
UK / 2026 / 10 mins
Content Warnings: blood, mutilation, gore
XOLO
Realizing that Xolotl—the Aztec god of death—has come to take his owner, a little dog named Skippy leads him on a heartfelt tour of the house, showing the small, loving moments that defined their life together.
USA / 2025 / 14 mins
Content Warnings: animal death
Book U Can Ask ???s
A stoner uses the internet to help a ghost find the correct address of its murderer's descendants.
USA / 2025 / 6 mins
Content Warnings: blood
You Are The Film
A film that knows it's a film - and that you may be a film too.
A playwright and a musician, both independently having a real rough day, find their way to a local theater to watch a movie — and quickly realize they are watching each other on the big screen — that they are both the film for the other. What follows is a series of realizations, and increasingly bizarre situations, as the characters try to guide each other through their plots and back out into reality.
Playful and strange, but always grounded in humanity, You are the Film is the new film from Makoto Ueda — the writer of Anomaly Audience-Award-Winner Beyond The Infinite Two Minutes — and is a twisting romp through cinematic genres. More details & tickets
PRECEDED BY
Drive-Out!
At a 1960's drive-in, two dorky teens' date goes poorly until an unexpected voice steps in to save the evening.
USA / 2026 /15 mins
Little Doors
A quiet, surreal exploration of a possible relationship at the end of the world.
As the world stumbles forward in the ruins of a mysterious apocalypse, a lonely woman persists in her closed-off life. After meeting an optimistic locksmith and fumbling towards a deeper connection, she suddenly finds that a small door has appeared on her abdomen. And there’s something on the other side that wants out. What does it mean? And more importantly, what will happen if she opens it?
Little Doors is a dry, absurd tale about the terrifying complexity of knowing another person... and letting them know you. More details & tickets
USA / 2026 / 1 hr 17 mins
Content Warnings: blood, loud noises, self-harm, suicide, violence, smoking
PRECEDED BY
Wall Udder
A dissatisfied woman confronts repressed feelings of malaise after her partner comes home smelling like milk.
USA / 2025 / 9 mins
Content Warnings: body horror, sexual themes
The Peril at Pincer Point
A whimsically comedic nautical adventure.
Eager to prove himself professionally, a bumbling ambitious sound recordist sets off to the remote island of Pincer Point to find the perfect sound for the final act of his tyrannical director’s latest feature. What he finds when he gets there is a lot of crabs and an eccentric collection of locals who tell tale of a mysterious pirate who stalks the nearby shores collecting unwitting souls to crew his spectral ship on an eternal voyage from which there is no return.
With dreamlike black-and-white photography and a handmade aesthetic that feels like Hundreds of Beavers by way of Guy Maddin, The Peril and Pincer Point is an eccentric, improvisational love letter to classic B-movie filmmaking. More details & tickets
PRECEDED BY
Chicken House
A reclusive man moves to the suburbs and starts receiving visits from mysterious strangers... dressed as chickens.
USA / 2026 / 15 mins
Corpus
A tense journey through erotic vibes and supernatural horror.
A young photographer and part-time drug dealer in 1998 New York City struggles with his art... and with letting go of a former infatuation. When he gets a mysterious invitation to a party upstate from that same unrequited love, the ever-increasing strangeness of the situation isn't enough to warn him in time of the terrifying danger ahead.
Seductive and repulsive in turns, Corpus examines loneliness, connection, and what can be taken when you lose yourself. More details & tickets
USA / 2026 / 1 hr 42 mins
Content Warnings: animal death, blood, body horror, death or dying, drugs/alcohol abuse, addiction, flashing lights, kidnapping/abduction, sexual violence, suicide, violence, smoking
PRECEDED BY
Anax
Your name is Iván. You’ve come to an underground rave in an Asturian forest to celebrate the popular night of San Juan. The music thumps through the trees, the air smells of dampness and freedom, and Clara—the girl you like—dances like it’s her last night. A friend offers you a taste of the substance he’s brought for the occasion. You accept. You want to feel more. That’s when you start to hear that female voice repeating your name.
Spain / 2026 / 14 mins
Content Warnings: flashing lights, drug use, sexual content, dead body
Sunday Morning Coffee & Donuts
10:00am-10:30am (directly preceding The Avalanche)
Location: The Little Theatre (Theatre 1 Lobby)
Our Sunday tradition! Free coffee from Aporia Coffee Co. and free donuts, before the film. Open to ticket-holders of The Avalanche and all pass-holders. (Available while supplies last. Tea available at The Little’s concession stand.)
The Avalanche
A liminal, B&W nightmare of past truths and present consequences.
Suddenly buried under snow - and unresolved relationship trauma - two exes explore the mysterious house in which they find themselves trapped. Time becomes unreliable as memories resurface, yesterday seeps into the increasingly claustrophobic today, and hard truths dangerously unravel.
A tense, and sometimes surreal, story of how even when you think you're done with the past, the past is not done with you. More details & tickets
USA / 2026 / 1 hr 17 mins
Content Warnings: maggots, blood, violence, jump scares, suicide
PRECEDED BY
The Audit
A very important company audit is jeopardized when a staff member reveals the fates of his coworkers' eternal souls.
USA / 2026 / 11 mins
Content Warnings: blood, violence
Blood & Guts
A documentary about the first family of independent horror.
Through interviews, archival footage, and behind-the-scenes clips — Blood & Guts is an intimate portrait of the filmmakers behind Hellbender, Where the Devil Roams, and Mother of Flies among others: the Adams family. A deep-dive illustration of how their unique personal histories feed their creation and innovation, and how evolving family dynamics are transformed into blood-soaked cinematic alchemy. More details & tickets
USA / 2026 / 1 hr 20 mins
Content Warnings: cancer, blood, gore
PRECEDED BY
Monstrous Me
When Ariel was a disabled and disfigured child of three years old, a bad babysitter brought over a bag of weed, her boyfriend, and a VHS of A Nightmare on Elm Street. From under the coffee table, through the railings, Ariel saw themselves in that Zenith television, in the face of Freddy Krueger, and decided there was agency in being a monster rather than a martyr.
USA / 2026 / 17 mins
Content Warnings: ableism
Light Pillar
A melancholy tale of space age longing.
Sometime in the near future, lonely janitor Lao Zha is one of the last remaining employees at a dying movie studio where new film projects have grown few and far between. Claiming a lack of funds, the studio’s owner offers to pay him with a virtual headset instead of his usual salary. Inside this seductive digital world, Lao Zha connects with a female player who entices him with dreams of interstellar travel and the possibility of something beyond the drudgery of everyday life. More details & tickets
China / 2026 / 1 hr 30 mins
In Chinese and Mandarin with English subtitles
Content Warnings: violence, smoking
PRECEDED BY
Aurora
Stranded in the farthest reaches of space, the sole survivor of a catastrophic accident faces a divine reckoning he never imagined.
USA / 2026 / 16 mins
I Love Paris
An acerbic mockumentary about vampires, music, and celebrity in the city of lights.
Paris is a musician with a narcissistic appetite for stardom, going so far as to have a cameraperson follow her around everywhere and document her assured rise to fame. Instead the lens captures a sudden attack - and Paris' transformation into a creature of the night.
What happens when a hunger for fame collides with a hunger for blood? And is the cost of your soul a fair price for your name in lights? More details & tickets
France, USA / 2026 / 1 hr 49 mins
In French and English with English subtitles
Content Warnings: blood, death or dying, drug abuse, alcohol abuse, addiction, violence
PRECEDED BY
Me first
Rosa, a shy immigrant cook, participates in a rigorous selection process to work at a renowned restaurant. But the violent atmosphere created by chef David will push Rosa to do things she never imagined.
Spain / 2026 / 17 mins
Content Warnings: blood
Closing Night Pizza Party
9:15-9:45pm (approx.; directly following I Love Paris)
Location: The Little Theatre (Theatre 1 Lobby)
Our annual Closing Night tradition! Following our final film, stick around for a free, laid-back pizza party celebrating the conclusion of this year's festival! Open to all ticket-holders of I Love Paris and all festival pass-holders. (Available while supplies last.