Mayhem Film Festival: Nottingham horror that started small

Mayhem Film Festival is Nottingham's horror, sci-fi and cult cinema festival, and it's been based at Broadway Cinema since it started in 2005. This year's edition ran from Thursday 15 to Sunday 18 October, with a full festival pass at £95 plus booking fee.

The bit I love most is how it started. Mayhem wasn't launched as a big four-day festival. It began as one night: a showcase of horror shorts, put together by two filmmakers, Steven Sheil and Chris Cooke. Twenty-odd years later it's a fixture with premieres, masterclasses and guests from around the world. If you make films, videos or anything creative in the East Midlands, that's worth sitting with for a minute.

01What is Mayhem Film Festival?

According to the festival's own site, Mayhem shows contemporary horror, science fiction and cult cinema and television from around the world. Alongside the films you get previews, masterclasses, visiting filmmakers and live cinema events, and it runs screenings through the year, not just in October.

It's curated and produced by Chris Cooke, Steven Sheil and Melissa Gueneau, with the Broadway team behind them. Broadway calls itself one of the UK's leading independent cinemas, and for once that's not a marketing line I'd argue with. It's also where Short Stack happens, so it's a big part of why Nottingham punches above its weight for film.

02What was on this year?

Broadway's pass page listed the first three titles for 2026:

• Imposters, a lo-fi sci-fi film from Caleb Phillips.
• Mum, I'm Alien Pregnant, a body horror comedy and the debut feature from New Zealand duo Thunderlips.
• Careful, a new 4K restoration of Guy Maddin's 1992 film.

That's a nice spread. Something deliberately rough round the edges, something gloriously daft, and a restored oddity from three decades ago. None of it is trying to look like a Marvel film, and that's the point.

03A feature that started as a short

The one that caught my eye is Mum, I'm Alien Pregnant. It premiered in the Midnight section at Sundance in January, and it's based on Thunderlips' own 2024 short, Help, I'm Alien Pregnant, with Hannah Lynch playing the same character in both.

So the short wasn't a calling card in the vague sense. It was the actual pilot. Same idea, same lead, proven on a small scale first, then made bigger. Dread Central's Sundance review describes it as "a wet, squelching landscape of practical effects", which tells you something too. Gloop, foley and nerve. Not a huge VFX bill.

A finished short you can show people is worth more than a feature you're still "developing".

04Why horror is the friendliest genre for small crews

This is my take rather than a statistic, but I think horror and cult film are the best training ground there is for anyone making video on a small budget. Here's why:

1. One location is enough. A flat, a stairwell, a car park at night. Horror loves a tight space, and tight spaces are cheap.
2. Darkness hides a lot. You can't light a whole warehouse on a shoestring, but you can light one face and let the rest fall away. That's a style, not a compromise.
3. Sound does the heavy lifting. A creak, a breath, a silence held a beat too long. Good audio costs far less than good visuals, and in horror it matters more.
4. Audiences forgive rough edges. Genre fans will happily watch something lo-fi if the idea is strong. Imposters being billed as lo-fi in a festival line-up is proof of that.

Every one of those lessons carries straight into commercial work. Lighting a small shop, getting clean sound in a busy room, making a single location look like more than it is. It's the same toolkit I use on event and brand shoots, just with fewer severed limbs.

05What I'd take from it if you make things in Nottingham

• Make the proof, not the pitch deck. A short, a teaser or even a 30-second test scene shows people what you mean in a way a document never will.
• Use the season. It's Halloween week, and Nottingham is full of atmosphere right now. Long dark evenings are free production design.
• Go to the room. Broadway runs Mayhem screenings across the year, plus Short Stack for Midlands shorts. Watching other people's work in a room full of local filmmakers is the cheapest film school going.

06Keep an eye on next year

Mayhem traditionally runs over four days in mid-October, so if horror or cult film is your thing, put a rough note in the diary for autumn 2027 and follow the festival for announcements.

And if you've got a short film, a spooky promo or a seasonal campaign you want to get made properly, have a look at my work and drop me a line. Or just tell me: what's the scariest thing you could film in Nottingham with no budget at all?