People might be getting sick of big studios making low-budget horror films but still raking in the cash. 

Horror fans are gravitating to the smaller houses that are doing big things with their acquisitions and distributions. Those companies are run by true genre cinephiles, not big pocketed executives who see dollars signs, not devoted fans. 

Take Joe Dain, for instance. He’s the CEO of Terror Films Releasing (TFR) an independent horror distributor; the company that brought you, among other titles, the Hell House LLC franchise, Be My Cat, and The Wendigo. 

In fact, they have released over 150 movies in the last decade, seven of them originals (with an eighth in post-production). They also have over 40 direct platform partnerships worldwide (and counting), multiple merchandise partners including their own shop, their Official AVOD YouTube Channel, Shocks and Docs with over 80,000 subscribers, a recent acquisition of the 10/31 Halloween anthology film franchise and a 20-picture folklore documentary film partnership with Small Town Monsters.

10/31 Halloween

Terror Films Releasing is showing no signs of slowing down, and if you ask CEO, Joe Dain, they are just getting started. 

Producer Rocky Gray shared his thoughts on selling his 10/31 franchise to TFR:

“When I set out to find digital distribution for my first Halloween anthology film, 10/31, Terror Films was at the top of my list and lucky for me, they accepted me. I have continued to be a part of the Terror Films family of filmmakers ever since, releasing all of the 10/31 films proudly under the Terror Films banner. 

Now five years and four films later, Terror Films is the exclusive owner of the digital rights to all of the 10/31films, and I couldn’t be more excited to see where they take it. Happy Anniversary Terror!”

Small Town Monsters

Head of Small Town Monsters, Seth Breedlove, had this to say about the 20-picture deal:

“We’re thrilled to be teaming up with Terror Films again. About eight years back, we signed one of our first distribution deals with them, and looking at how far things have come since then, I can honestly say we owe a lot to that partnership. Those early releases found an audience in part due to the work that Terror Films put in.

Getting the chance to expand the reach of our newer titles with them feels a bit like coming full circle. The difference now is that we know we’re working with people who care about the films and the filmmakers behind them—something that’s getting harder to find these days.”

iHorror had an opportunity to speak with Dain about Terror Films beginnings and what’s next for the indie genre label. 

The Interview:

iHorror: Congratulations on a decade of horror Joe! When did you first become interested in horror films? 

Joe Dain: I was a kid, my Dad always had on classic movies from the 40’s and 50’s. He loved horror films like The Attack of the 50FT Woman, The Mummy, Creature From the Black Lagoon and pretty much anything starring Bela Lugosi, so I was exposed to horror movies at an early age. As I got older, I watched and fell in love with horror films that are now considered iconic and classics in their own right, from Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Rosemary’s Baby, Poltergeist, Psycho, The Omen, IT (Both the TV and new version), The Exorcist, Jaws, and The Shining to name a few.

I mean, honestly the list goes on and on, which is why I find it amusing and even a bit perplexing when someone asks me what my “favorite” horror movie is. I don’t know how it’s even possible to realistically settle on one film when there are so many good ones. Even considering a film I recently watched, like Bring Her Back with Sally Hawkins and Jonah Wren Phillips, who gave an utterly terrifying and disturbing performance as Oliver! I loved it. Again, I could keep listing movies that have resonated with me, but this article would quickly become more like an essay!  

How did Terror Films Releasing start? 

My colleague and business partner Jim Klock and I had been working together for several years at another company, which was producing mostly star driven, yet riskier elevated art house films. While Jim oversaw Acquisitions and Development, I was in charge of overseeing Production and Finance. This also meant dealing with foreign sales agents, as well as being involved in many of our domestic distribution deals for our films. It was around 2014 that I first started to really notice a shift in the market.

Movie stars were not landing us the foreign sales they once did and the advances from domestic distributors started to dwindle as well. It was around this time that I pitched to the team of pivoting into digital distribution and specifically horror. Having spent almost 5 years as the head of production for Full Moon Features (Ghoulies, The Puppet Master Franchise) and having produced some hilarious films like The Gingerdead Man starring Gary Busey and Tommy Chong in Evil Bong, I got to experience first-hand the incredible fandom within the horror community. After going over the pros and cons, we placed the wheels into motion and haven’t looked back since. 

What has been your most successful film to date? 

Many would say the Hell House LLC franchise, and to a degree, they would not be wrong. However, we’re also talking 5 films over the last decade. Between the filmmaker’s story telling abilities combined with our marketing efforts and platform relationships, we’ve been able to turn that little indie franchise into a juggernaut no one could have foreseen. That said, we’ve been able to partner with some incredibly talented filmmakers over the last decade and have quite a few success stories in our library.

From our own originals like The Chosen, which was licensed by Netflix, (a near impossibility to pull off today), or Trace, which premiered as an exclusive on Redbox when that actually meant something. Even our original anthology Patient Seven, after almost a decade, continues to be one of our best performing films quarter after quarter. However, it’s the films we have acquired over the years that have helped us build our reputation as a reliable source of eclectic, indie horror films. From Inner Demon, Savageland, The House on Pine Street, Dead Body, Talon Falls, Be My Cat: A Film for Anne, The Taking of Deborah Logan, have all been successful in their own right. We’ve had sleeper hits like House of Purgatory, Night of Something Strange, Last Radio Call, The Trip, Life of Belle and Dark Entities, just to name a few, which horror fans have embraced. 

At the end of the day, I don’t think it’s that easy to define success because it can mean different things to different filmmakers. For many, yes, it’s making money. After all, we are in business to make money for our filmmakers, but for some it’s the level of exposure from press outlets, positive reviews, festival accolades, or how many platforms we’ve managed to get their film on, including what some filmmakers consider the holy grail of horror platforms, the ever-elusive licensing deal with Shudder. In this ever-challenging landscape where horror content is over saturated in the market and overloading the platforms, it’s no small feat to help these indie horror films find their way and actually make money for our filmmakers. Nothing makes me happier than when we are sending filmmakers royalty payments quarter after quarter. 

In what ways are independent films better than big studio blockbusters? 

Indie horror has the ability to break barriers and go places many Studio level films can’t or won’t go, which can often be to cookie cutter and safe. Whereas indie horror can often be edgier, and in many cases, scarier because there is no budget for extravagant make up effects or CGI and rather the filmmakers have to get creative and rely on the one and only rule that matters when making a horror film, scare the shit out of the audience. Whether that’s through solid storytelling, good acting, good old fashion jump scares, blood and guts scares, or one of my favorite approaches – the less is more scares where you allow the audience to freak themselves out.

That said, we’ve seen major movie exhibitors take chances on indie horror films over the years. Everyone always thinks of The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity, and for good reason but if you look closely, there are more that have broken down that door like, Saw, Open Water, It Follows, Skinamarink, and let’s not forget how Terrifier 3 blew the doors off the Box Office. These are just a few examples of indie films with small budgets but made a big impact and found a wide screen audience. Love or hate them, for those of us in the true indie horror space, we need to celebrate their accomplishments because every time this happens, it opens the door for the entire indie horror community. Even for us, Hell House LLC: Lineage on a meager $175,00 budget and a very limited release, has managed to rake in over $650,000 in the box office. That’s a huge accomplishment.

Terror Films catalog is massive, what criteria do you look for when deciding to distribute a film? How about produce one?

We actually only have 152 movies currently released. That may seem like a lot, but it averages out to about 15 movies per year over the last decade. Now, of course this does not include the films no longer under the banner due to terms ending or the films yet to be released, but when most indie distributors are releasing anywhere from 50 to as high as 125 films per year into the streaming space, I’d say we’re more on the boutique side than most.

Over the years we’ve certainly said no to as many films we’ve said yes too but it’s not because we think we have it all figured out. Trust me, we’re the first to admit that we (nor anyone) in this business knows anything. If we did, there would never be a failed film again. When it comes to selecting films, Jim is at the helm of that. He’s always the first one to watch a film submitted to us and I mean he actually watches them all the way through.

When I asked him why he watches them all the way through, he simply said, “you never know when it might get good and catch you by surprise”. Aside from trying to select films that have a solid beginning, middle and end and are ideally technically well executed, we also do our best to pick films that are different than anything else we have in our library. This is no easy task when it comes to horror with so many common tropes, but I believe we’ve managed to do a pretty decent job over the years. As far as producing again, we recently started to venture back into that space. Jim worked out a partnership with the gang at The Ninth House and so far, we’ve produced 3 films with them, including Restitution, which we released the end of 2024 and Terror Tales: Poetry & Death Volume 1, a horror anthology we released on October 10th, with part 2 set to be released early next year. 

How is your company different than others? 

I’d say there are multiple things that make us stand out from other boutique distributors in the indie streaming space. First and foremost, we’re a horror company that has spent the last decade building a recognizable brand so if you have a film that fits within the horror genre, being under our banner automatically elevates your film’s awareness with the horror audience. We’re at a place now that there really isn’t a horror news outlet that matters who doesn’t cover us. 

I mentioned earlier that we’re not a high-volume distributor and that matters to a lot of our filmmakers. Because we’re more curated and have so many great films, we spend time actually promoting them over the entire course of their term with us. This has allowed us to hold the line and not become what I often refer to as a content dump company. We foster every film and continue to place them on new platforms any chance we can, and we promote, promote, promote. We drop trailers, posters, stills, clips, and push for reviews. When a film starts to go live across the platforms, we launch paid boosted ads on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Google Ads, etc.

We keep a full-page ad in every edition of Scream Magazine, which all of our films get promoted in. We do paid ads with platforms like Rue Morgue and Fangoria in order to tap into their hundreds of thousands of followers. More importantly, not a single dime that we spend on marketing is rolled over to our filmmakers. That’s our skin in the game. It’s our way of thanking them for taking a chance on us when we know they have other options. We also sponsor film festivals, show up at the horror conventions, do podcasts, participate in filmmaker forums and create promotional banners and videos, all in an effort to keep the brand relevant, which in turn helps our filmmakers. On top of all of this, we are an employee-owned company which means everyone on the team has a vested interest in the company’s success, which is based on our filmmakers having success. We’re in it together. 

Why do you think horror fans are so passionate about their genre? 

It certainly varies person to person, but horror films are not only entertaining, they can so often be an escape mechanism. They allow us to disconnect from our lives for that 90 minutes or so. I personally think it’s fun to be scared and get that adrenaline rush. I’ve even found they can help me destress. Horror films can also cross genres like no other genre, managing to be scary, funny and even dramatic and somehow pull it off. There is nothing better to me than that feeling of fear you have right after the credits roll on a horror film that causes you to turn on all of the lights in your house. 

Is there one movie in your collection that people may have overlooked you feel deserves a closer look? 

This is a great question and one we discuss internally when we see some of these awesome films under our banner struggling to find the audience. There are more than several I’d love the horror fans to give a chance. I won’t name them all, but here are some: Worst Laid Plans, Derelicts, Head, Beyond the Chamber of Terror, Sapien, Grieve, Zero Hour, and I Dream of Psychopomp. That said, I would encourage indie horror fans to check out all of our films. We have such a wide variety of them from so many talented filmmakers! 

What are your feelings on AI? Not as an effects tool, but using it to write full screenplays? 

AI is here whether we like it or not. It’s transforming every industry, not just ours. It’s driving innovation and creating new opportunities. It has the ability to improve all of our skill sets and make our lives easier but with any new technology, we either have to get on board, learn to use it in a way that makes sense for us, or risk falling behind. It’s a personal choice all of us need to make for ourselves, that includes whether someone chooses to use it as a screen writing tool, or for marketing, or to create poster art or even assist with filmmaking, but I use the word “tool” for a reason.

AI should be used to enhance natural human ability and creativity, not replace it. It’s far from perfect and still requires human involvement and inspiration. We also caution filmmakers on submitting completely AI generated art or films with AI generated scenes as we’re seeing more and more platforms reject these in the QC process. We recently had a film that we could not get past the QC at Tubi due to an AI generated segment. In addition, every single AI generated poster has to be rebuilt on our end to pass the QC because those files are almost never layered and that’s something we’re having to do internally. So again, AI can be great as a tool, but it should never be the heart and soul of someone’s work. 

What’s the most important thing you’ve learned about filmmaking/distribution in the past 10 years? 

I said this earlier and what I’ve learned is that no one knows a damn thing in this business. I’m not suggesting that experience doesn’t count for something. I’ve learned a lot along the way from my many mistakes as well as from listening to those smarter than me. I’m always happy to share any advice or guidance I can, but it doesn’t mean it will help with someone else’s journey in this crazy business. There is no formula to success, no handbook or course or film guru whose advice you can follow and be successful.

At the highest levels in this industry, we’re taking what we’ve learned and making educated guesses at best. There is no one or right way to make a movie and there is certainly no one or right way to distribute a movie that will guarantee success, whether that is with a distributor or by self-releasing. It simply doesn’t exist and anyone saying otherwise is full of crap. Follow your gut, take risks, avoid the nay sayers, do your homework and educate yourself but above all, do this because you love it. You won’t survive this industry if you don’t love what you’re doing. 

If there is one bit of advice I can share, which I can say without a doubt is actually vital to anyone’s success, is to surround yourself with people who are like-minded, hardworking, dedicated, know more than you and are not afraid to challenge you. TFR would not be standing a decade later if not for Jim Klock, our COO and VP of Acquisitions, Brad Geiszler, our VP of Technical Operations, and Ryan Brookhart, our VP of Graphic Design. These guys have been here since day one and stuck it out when things got rocky but instead of bailing when the waters got rough, they stayed the course. Adding to that is our amazing VP of Marketing and Filmmaker Relations, Sarah Clingenpeel and our VP of Day-To-Day Operations, Frankie Rai. You’re only as good as the people you surround yourself with and Ten Years of Terror is only the beginning! 

Trip

What’s next for Terror Films Releasing? Any new exciting projects we should watch out for? 

Oh man, after 10 years how about a vacation? In all seriousness, one of the most exciting things for us has been the new, direct platform relationships we’ve established in 2025, allowing us to create additional revenue streams for our filmmakers as we venture into 2026 and beyond. I’m also excited about the opportunities we’re seeing in the theatrical space for indie horror specifically.

We’re currently working on something for 2026 that could open up the possibility of our films getting exposure theatrically in a way we have not seen since launching the company ten years ago. The landscape is always changing and it’s vital we keep our finger on the pulse and take every opportunity that arises. 

Hell House LLC: Lineage

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