Best Screenplay went to Ripe by Siobhan Dent, a poetic and deeply unsettling piece about a young woman working at a produce stand who discovers that the bruised fruit around her seems to be feeding on her, not the other way around. It’s a haunting meditation on body image and decay that lingered long after reading.

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Several exceptional scripts nearly took the crown. Colin Elkins' Beneath the Failing Light offered a gripping dive into religious horror, secrets, and control in a small Arkansas church. Dippy (by Deayden Jackson) delivered psychological horror with a terrifying childhood clown resurfacing during a teenager’s mental collapse. Sarah Walker's superb Rebellion brought mythic weight and epic tragedy to its tale of tribal vengeance and dark magic. And The Screens of the Damned stood out for its inventive, self-aware horror, blending satire and the supernatural as a ghostly producer criticizes a mortuary worker’s screenplay—with deadly results. It's an example of very impressive co-writing from Anton Ballard and Felicity Bolitho.

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For Best Twist, Jigsaw Sky by E.M. Warren took top honors with its mind-bending reveal: a couple studying cosmic anomalies discover they’re part of a simulation built after the world ended, and that even their minds may not be worth preserving. It was a bold concept executed with precision.

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Other twist-driven standouts included Body of Work (Dan Richardson), which disguised its sinister premise of art made from human body parts beneath clever misdirection; Frank Dietz's Cocodril, where a man cured of a reptilian curse finds his family transformed instead; Lift the Veil, by writing duo Paul Moncrieffe & Andrew Opar, where a seemingly innocent wedding video shoot becomes a demonic ritual of revenge; and Snap, in which past murderers are trapped in a repeating hell at the mercy of their victims. The Glass Coffin shocked us with its domestic zombie twist, while Lineage made us grin and grimace in equal measure as a family drama gave way to a darkly comedic serial killer revelation involving the “Tooth Fairy Killer.”

When it came to Most Messed Up Death, nothing quite compared to That Thing by Ramon Ellis. A man investigating strange noises in his wall is sucked into a twisted version of his childhood home and slowly crushed by his own double. It was body horror at its most symbolic and visceral. The runners-up in this category did not hold back. Bait featured a spearing, a dragging, and shark dismemberment. Bugged  gave us a fly-induced cranial self-destruction which had us reaching for the painkillers! Jacket was brief but brutal. Metal Show turned a concert into a hellish massacre, complete with exploding genitals and bodies ripping in half. From the wonderful mind of Johnny Massahi, Tele XXX delivered pure WTF-horror as a man was sexually mutilated by a haunted TV. 

For Best Villain, we awarded Feeder by Blake Strain, where a kindly neighbor ladles out addictive soup that hooks its victims on her parasitic bodily fluids. The horror here was quiet, domestic, and deeply invasive. We also want to acknowledge Thin Blue Line of Fire, whose organized, white-supremacist police force was terrifyingly real. From the imagination of Kevin Machate, One for the Box gave us Miss Jolene, a grotesquely sentient ventriloquist dummy pulling the strings on a disturbing partnership. And Wolf Bane Blum delivered Oscar Touzet—a casually cannibalistic “wolf-child” with a taste for cursed bloodlines.

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Finally, Best Dialogue went to My Roommate Is Dead by Chloe Rymer, a darkly funny and heartbreaking story told entirely through passive-aggressive notes between a student and the ghost of her deceased roommate. The wit, emotional progression, and eventual intimacy were expertly done. Among the runners-up, Little Steps charmed and creeped us out with its haunted doll giving life advice. The Shadow Side used sparse, loaded lines to tackle guilt and grief. There's A Monster In The House stood out for its sharp, emotionally raw family exchanges. Tether delivered sharp satire about fashion and death omens. And The Tides used silence, tension, and fragmented conversations to paint a portrait of grief and unspoken tragedy.

FEATURE LENGTH

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The most coveted award of the contest, Best Screenplay, recognises exceptional craftsmanship in story, character, and concept—scripts that feel ready to leap from the page to the screen. This year’s top prize goes to M.K. Thorne for the eerie and emotionally layered Chalk White, in which a teacher’s chalkboard begins predicting student deaths. Thorne crafts a story that’s not only high-concept but deeply personal, culminating in a tragic revelation tied to the protagonist’s own past.

Several finalists made this decision excruciatingly close. Be Gay, Do Murder impressed with its inventive meta-commentary and a narrative that shifts its own genre boundaries in real time. Count to 10 delivered relentless pacing and brutality wrapped in a survival horror setup that felt razor-tight. Arachnid Infestation crawled into our nightmares with scientific plausibility and terrifying escalation. The Apartment wove surreal dread and urban isolation into a psychological descent, while Vengeance Valley stripped away the supernatural to reveal something even scarier: horror made by human hands.

Best Twist honours the screenplays that flipped the narrative in the most shocking and satisfying ways. The winner, Red Winter by Valentina Cross, revealed not one traitor in a locked-room thriller—but none at all. In a daring move, the entire cast of suspects turns out to be fractured personalities of a single mind, struggling for dominance in a deadly therapy experiment. An exceptional play on identity, structure, and expectation. Close behind, The Abyss Job turned a cursed heist into a nightmare loop orchestrated by one of their own. Creepy Project stacked its reveals like trapdoors, always one step ahead of the reader. The Sundowner unmasked its villain not just as a killer, but a supernatural soul collector. Shipped took a terrifyingly personal turn when its victims realised their captor was their biggest fan. And Inner Demons twisted the exorcism genre by literally manifesting its demon in shocking, brutal form.

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A horror story lives or dies by the strength of its antagonist, and we had a whole host of unforgettable villains. The award goes to Gramps, the sinister bedtime spectre from Kindling by Oren Weisz. Whispering through flames to grieving children, Gramps blurs the line between urban legend and malevolent reality, feeding on loneliness and guilt. Runner-up horrors came in many forms. The Skull Man from Tortured Soul Productions delivered psychological torment with a filmmaker’s precision. The Wendigo in Fear Eater was beautifully folkloric but also terrifyingly visceral, a creature of spine-snapping terror. The entity from The Phantom Cabinet offered pure nightmare fuel—silent, clinical, and grotesque. Glasya from Monsters brought physical brutality and sadism. And Make Them Beautiful introduced the Rotting Man, a grotesque puppet master of corpses—oozing, melting, and unforgettable.

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Most Messed Up Death celebrates the horror screenplays that made even our seasoned judges wince. Topping the list: The Cradle by Sasha Vane, in which a fertility cult “blesses” a father by surgically sewing him into a living womb. It’s as horrifying in execution as it is in concept and it stuck with us in all the worst ways. There were plenty more grisly deaths clawing for the crown. In They Bring Hell, Janet’s flaming demise while suspended on a hook was as theatrical as it was terrifying. Serpents of the Dead offered full-on carnage in an alligator pit with ripping, tearing, and decapitation galore. Witchwood featured a jaw-ripping séance to rival Hereditary, while Off the Map turned human bodies into tools of torture and spectacle. And in The Ibex, a chilling discovery of partially consumed corpses—still in uniform was enough to make one character vomit... and us flinch.

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Best Opening Scene highlights screenplays that grab the audience from page one and refuse to let go. This year’s winner, Porcelain Smile by Dana Wexler, gave us a single-take birthday party from hell. A doll’s eyes move. Blood seeps from the cake. And Grandma? She’s dead at the table, her face delicately placed on a porcelain toy. Welcome to the party. A Hell of Heaven yanked us from Reagan-era speeches into a torture chamber. The Call oozed dread from a “black sand beach” into a cultist professor’s nightmare. These scripts didn’t warm us up, they dropped us straight into the fire.

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Great dialogue is more than just words. It’s tension, rhythm, and soul. This Is How You Haunt Me by Kevin Riggs claimed the prize for its searing, intimate portrayal of grief. As a widower begins receiving calls from his dead husband, the dialogue transcends horror into poetic heartbreak. The climax (a monologue that blurs the line between haunting and being haunted) left an ache in the gut. Other finalists brought flair, wit, and dread. Down in Upstate balanced trauma and sarcasm with killer one-liners. The Devil’s Door gave us chilling folklore disguised as banter. Superstar Blvd mixed dark comedy and psychological manipulation through a twisted villain’s “subtitled” thoughts. And Prime Time Vampires (Frank Dietz, yet again) was sharp, meta, and bloody fun, serving fangs and zingers in equal measure.

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To everyone who submitted a screenplay this year: thank you. Your stories terrified us, surprised us, and moved us. Whether you made us squirm, laugh, or cry out for mercy, your voice matters. Keep writing. Keep sharpening your blades. Horror needs you.

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Thanks also to our generous sponsors HorrorPublisher.com, the hybrid publisher everyone has been screaming for!

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Our next contest is open now and we hope to see you in it!

Stay spooky,

David York & The Contest Judges