Three Rivers Film Festival is Making More Room for Horror
In 2025, one of the first programs in the newly-resurrected Hollywood Theater in Dormont, now under the Row House banner, was the Chiller Theater horror shorts block—part of the storied Three Rivers Film Festival. One of the largest single-screen auditoriums dedicated to film in the area, the nearly 400-seat house was packed. Unsurprisingly, the city of Pittsburgh’s horror community came through once again.
“We started putting the horror features into the festival because Chiller Theater did so well last year,” says Shanna Carrick, Film Pittsburgh’s executive director.
This year’s Three Rivers Film Festival, which will run from November 4–15, includes three horror features alongside the returning block of shorts: Grind, Los Vampires, and Mum, I’m Alien Pregnant will all compete for the inaugural Suzanne and George A. Romero Award for Best Horror Feature. For Carrick, the opportunity now is to spread the word and have more horror filmmakers submit their work.
When we spoke this past week, she was excited about the audience Pittsburgh already has. There’s a lot of work involved in putting films in front of that audience: recruiting features—as was the case with the three features in competition this year—as well as balancing the limited schedule and giving moviegoers a reason to trust a program that might ask them to step outside their comfort zones.
Giving horror filmmakers a reason to submit
Carrick joined Film Pittsburgh in July 2025, and while her work on the program at large was limited at first, Chiller Theater, she says, was “all me, because I’m such a horror fan. Horror comedy is my favorite genre, so I was like—Pittsburgh’s such a horror town. I know that we usually do a horror shorts block, but we need to go hard on it. And it paid off! It was great.”
That lineup brought local shorts like Jamie Lockhart’s The Monkey Claw, Bethany Barich’s Strawberry Sweet Killers, and Rebecca Gruss’s Thrift Store Ouija Board into a program alongside international horror like Berta, Whitch, Haint, and more. In doing so, Carrick hopes to give Pittsburgh-based filmmakers the opportunity to meet visiting filmmakers and give their work broader exposure.
The creation of the $1000 Romero Award solidifies Three Rivers’ commitment to the genre, giving horror features a more formal pedestal to strive toward. Presented by the George A. Romero Foundation, Carrick explains that its name was expanded to include the late Suze Romero, whom she describes as a champion of female filmmakers in the genre.
The connection to George, meanwhile, dates back to the festival’s beginning. His action-drama biker film Knightriders, starring Ed Harris and Tom Savini, was part of the very first edition of the festival in 1982. While not a horror film, Knightriders is part of the local history that Carrick wants Three Rivers to honor.
What can horror make accessible?
The films themselves offer a sense of why Carrick wants horror in the program moving forward. When I asked what the genre can do with subjects that might be difficult to approach through documentary or drama, our conversation turned to Grind.
The horror anthology explores work and exploitation in the gig economy. Its framing story combines parodies of Starbucks and Amazon into a single corporate conglomerate. Its treatment of labor and capitalism moves through tones she describes as “fantastical, satirical, funny, bloody, and dark.”
“I think it makes hard topics a little more accessible to certain people,” she says. That’s an argument for taking the film’s absurdity seriously. The corporate satire, Carrick says, gives viewers a recognizable target, while the anthology introduces them to different filmmakers and actors. The comedy and bloodshed are just the vehicle through which it invites its audience into the subject matter.
There’s a similar connection between the filmmakers represented in Chiller Theater and the concerns their own films explore. Noting the distinctly feminist character of last year’s program, Carrick says a majority of this year’s Chiller selections also have some kind of gender aspect to them. Horror is most effective when it comes from a place of truth, and can shed light on an issue in a way audiences might not normally consider.
For someone uncertain about horror, Carrick recommends checking out Los Vampires. Incidentally, she chooses it for horror veterans, too, praising its beautiful cinematography and production design, and the historical appeal to viewers who love the classic Universal Dracula films—the film recreates the dual productions of Tod Browning’s Dracula and the Spanish-language version shot on the same sets at night, while grisly murders begin to plague the soundstage. There is a lot of blood, she warns, but she sees the film as an opportunity for people with different interests to enjoy the same screening.
Helping independent films find their audience
Carrick’s horror ambitions are just one slice of what she hopes Three Rivers can offer independent filmmakers. She’s realistic about the likelihood of a distributor arriving at a screening and buying the film. “We are not necessarily a marketplace festival…. I mean, that’d be the dream. I would love it if it happened, but realistically we know that it’s not likely. We want to help these filmmakers find their audiences here in Pittsburgh.”
Unfortunately, screening slots are limited, and Carrick and her programming team often have very difficult choices to make. Some films that she loved weren’t able to be included because they were too similar to others already selected. Hopefully, the final roster gives viewers enough variety to justify coming back for another screening. “We can’t program to everybody, and we know that,” she says, “We try to have a little bit of everything.”
Single-film tickets let viewers choose screenings that fit their interests and schedules, a luxury that Carrick admits not all festivals can accommodate, but she also wants those who buy a pass to trust the curation enough to explore more widely. The hope is that someone who comes for Chiller or a horror feature might find a reason to return for a different kind of film.
Her approach to other local festivals follows the same thinking. “I don’t think [the other local festivals] are our competition. But I want to share our audiences. I want my audience for Chiller and the three horror features that we programmed to also go to Nightcrawler, to go to Thriller Picture Show, to go to all of these other film festivals, because it does well!”
A festival for the “eccentric Pittsburgher”
When I asked what would show her, a few years from now, that the investment in horror had paid off, Carrick offered a lofty benchmark: “If we’re premiering things before Fantasia!” For now, she looks to the Montreal genre festival for films that she might bring to Pittsburgh. That’s how she recruited Los Vampires, for instance. Progress would mean more of those filmmakers purposefully making Three Rivers part of their festival strategy.
She wants filmmakers to recognize an opportunity here, and she wants audiences to recognize a festival that understands their interests. The enthusiastic response to Chiller helped persuade the team to program more horror; the award is meant to help more of those features find their way to the festival.
She also wants the full lineup to feel coherent to the people it serves. After all, it’s Pittsburghers buying tickets and filling the seats, so even if a film isn’t made locally, she wants it to fit in with the values and interests we hold dear. “I would measure success by how people talk about our curation…. If you put all our feature films next to each other, is there a cohesive vibe? You’re like, ‘Yeah, this could be for everybody, but it’s especially for me, the eccentric Pittsburgher.’”
Article by Ande Thomas
Ande loves the intersection of sci-fi and horror, where our understanding of the natural world clashes with our fear of the new and unknown. He is an independent member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and a supporting member of the Horror Writers Association. He writes about monsters and foreign horror and can also be found over on Letterboxd.
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Film Pittsburgh executive director Shanna Carrick discusses the expanding horror program at Three Rivers Film Festival, the new Romero Award, and helping independent filmmakers find their audiences in Pittsburgh.