Lights, Camera, No Crew
If there’s one good thing to crawl out of 2020’s lockdowns—besides sourdough and existential dread—it’s Untitled Horror Movie, Nick Simon’s delightfully chaotic found-footage horror comedy about actors who can’t stop acting, even when they accidentally summon Satan.
Filmed entirely through Zoom during the pandemic, this is a movie that could’ve gone horribly wrong. Instead, it leans into the absurdity of its own circumstances and somehow emerges as both a horror satire and a loving roast of Hollywood narcissism. Think The Blair Witch Project meets The Office, but everyone’s unionized and has ring lights.
The Plot: Six Idiots Summon a Demon (Accidentally, On Purpose)
It all begins when Declan (Luke Baines) learns that Belle, the TV show he and his fellow co-stars are on, has been canceled. Instead of grieving like normal unemployed people—with wine and denial—his friend Kip (Timothy Granaderos) decides this is the perfect time to make their own horror movie. Because nothing screams “career stability” like independent film during a global pandemic.
The gang includes:
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Kelly (Claire Holt), a diva whose ego has its own IMDb page.
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Alex (Emmy Raver-Lampman), the only person who seems capable of rational thought.
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Chrissy (Katherine McNamara), the ditzy optimist with a psychic pendulum.
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Max (Darren Barnet), the fame-hungry himbo with a TikTok soul.
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Kip, the self-proclaimed writer-director, whose “script” reads like ChatGPT having a midlife crisis.
What follows is a hilarious chain of bad decisions. They shoot a séance scene for their movie, because that’s what all good horror films have—candles, chanting, and total disregard for spiritual safety protocols. Unfortunately, they don’t just pretend to summon something. They actually do.
The result? A malevolent entity that starts wrecking their Zoom calls, trashing their homes, and delivering jump scares through poor Wi-Fi connections. Basically, the supernatural version of bad tech support.
When the Wi-Fi Is Evil
Let’s be honest—found footage movies are usually about as fresh as that leftover pizza you’ve been avoiding. But Untitled Horror Movie breathes new (and surprisingly chaotic) life into the format. The fact that it was shot entirely by the cast in their own homes makes it both a filmmaking experiment and a low-budget miracle.
And yes, it looks like a Zoom call. But that’s the charm. Simon and co-writer Baines embrace the limitations with a wink. The actors handle their own lighting, sound, and camera work—so the movie feels both authentic and hilariously self-aware. Every ring light reflection and camera tilt becomes part of the joke.
This is a film that knows exactly what it is: a horror-comedy for the chronically online. It’s the cinematic equivalent of doomscrolling your own career.
The Cast: Narcissists with Great Timing
Let’s give credit where credit is due—this cast gets it. They understand that the true horror of Hollywood isn’t ghosts or demons; it’s actors trapped in a group chat.
Luke Baines as Declan manages to be both charming and insufferable, the kind of guy who probably refers to himself as “a storyteller” on LinkedIn. Claire Holt’s Kelly is pure Hollywood poison—vain, shallow, and deliciously funny. You almost want the ghost to haunt her agent instead.
Katherine McNamara’s Chrissy is the heart of the group, which is unfortunate because she’s also the one who brings the cursed pendulum into the mix. Watching her go from cheerful to possessed feels like seeing your favorite influencer suddenly start promoting pyramid schemes.
Meanwhile, Emmy Raver-Lampman (of The Umbrella Academy) grounds the chaos as Alex, the only adult in this virtual kindergarten of egos. Darren Barnet plays Max like a golden retriever with Wi-Fi, while Timothy Granaderos’ Kip could give every failed film student PTSD.
Their chemistry sells the comedy. You can tell they were genuinely having fun—and probably losing their minds in the process.
The Haunting of Zoom Call 666
The scares in Untitled Horror Movie are surprisingly effective given the constraints. Sure, it’s all digital—shadows, flickering lights, distorted faces—but Simon uses the Zoom interface itself as a tool for suspense. When a ghost appears behind someone’s shoulder in a window, it’s more unnerving than a dozen CGI monsters.
There’s something uniquely terrifying about watching supernatural events unfold in a medium we all spent too much time staring at during quarantine. It’s like the ghost of 2020 came to say, “You thought working from home was bad? Try dying from home.”
Horror in the Age of Ring Lights
At its core, Untitled Horror Movie is a satire about ego. These characters can’t go five minutes without making everything about themselves, even when the supernatural starts deleting them one by one. Their first instinct isn’t to flee—it’s to livestream it.
It’s the perfect commentary on the influencer generation and the entertainment industry’s tendency to turn tragedy into content. The ghost isn’t the villain here—it’s just the only one with good taste.
Even when bodies start dropping, the group’s main concern is career preservation. One of them literally says, “This is going to tank my brand.” It’s horrifyingly believable.
DIY Filmmaking at Its Dumbest—and Smartest
You’ve got to respect the hustle. Shooting a horror movie entirely over Zoom sounds like a recipe for disaster, yet Simon pulls it off with flair. The editing keeps the pacing tight, and the found-footage chaos never gets too dizzying.
The clever use of technology—the screen-sharing, the glitching, the chat messages popping up mid-scare—turns the mundane into the macabre. And unlike most pandemic-born projects, this one doesn’t feel like a gimmick. It feels like a comedy about what the film industry became during lockdown: people screaming into webcams, pretending it’s art.
Which, ironically, is exactly what this movie is.
The Spirit of Quarantine Comedy
There’s something delightfully cathartic about watching these fictional actors spiral into supernatural chaos. It’s every awkward Zoom meeting we ever had—just with more death and better lighting.
The humor walks a fine line between biting and absurd. When characters argue about scene notes while demonic shadows loom behind them, it’s a perfect encapsulation of 2020 priorities. “Yes, I might be possessed, but can we do one more take?”
Even the deaths carry comedic timing. One character dies offscreen mid-video call, and everyone reacts with more inconvenience than grief. You half-expect someone to say, “Ugh, now who’s hosting?”
The Irony of the Title
Calling this movie Untitled Horror Movie might sound lazy, but it’s actually genius. It’s meta without being smug—a blank slate that doubles as a punchline. The title feels like a note on a studio whiteboard that no one ever fixed, which fits perfectly for a story about actors who think they’re creating art when they’re really just summoning demons via low-budget script.
In an industry full of pretentious titles like The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Untitled Horror Movie is refreshingly honest. It’s exactly what it says it is: a horror movie about people too dumb to name their own film.
Final Cut: A Horror Comedy Worth Streaming from Hell
Untitled Horror Movie shouldn’t work—but it does, spectacularly. It’s clever, chaotic, and self-aware in all the right ways. Director Nick Simon turns the limitations of lockdown into a creative playground, proving that sometimes the scariest thing in Hollywood isn’t failure—it’s your Wi-Fi speed.
The film’s dark humor lands because it hits close to home. We’ve all been there—trapped on a call, pretending everything’s fine while everything around us is collapsing. This movie just adds ghosts to the mix.
Rating: 9 out of 10.
A devilishly funny quarantine experiment where narcissism meets necromancy—Untitled Horror Movie proves that even in lockdown, stupidity finds a way to go viral.
