Unnamed Footage Festival 2026: ‘This House is Totally Haunted’ turns the creep on high
Sean Nichols Lynch expands his deranged world.
Writer/director Sean Nichols Lynch runs wild with his new film, This House is Totally Haunted, the sequel to 2024’s The Ceremony is About to Begin. Playing this year’s Unnamed Footage Festival, the film winds up actor Chad Westbrook Hinds and lets him stir up a frenzy in a film that’s clearly better than the last. The stakes are higher; the tension is thicker; and the payoff is more disturbing. Lynch possesses a stronger hand on the material, allowing the characters to breathe in their environment. Mixing Creep with Influencer, This House is Totally Haunted is a real crowd pleaser.
Hinds somehow crawls deeper into your skin. Andy (aka Anubis) claims to be a cult survivor, and he lures two young paranormal filmmakers, Lex (Alex Berg) and Claire (Kari Noelle), who host a popular web series, to investigate his secluded home in the woods. He just wants the ghosts gone, so he can finally get a good night’s sleep. With the audience in on Andy’s big secret, Lynch plays on that fear to heighten the tension and make you squirm in your seat. From the outset, something feels off about the home and what’s tucked away in an upstairs bedroom. Andy swears it’s his ailing mother – but is it really?
When Andy introduces Mr. Evans (John Laird), Claire, a medium, gets a weird vibration and believes that what they’ve stepped into is far from supernatural. Or maybe it is? Or it could be both? Lynch offers up these quandaries to keep the viewer on their toes. After Lex and Claire set up cameras and poke around the house, their investigation exposes truths in surprising ways. Things are never as they seem when it comes to paranormal films—toss in a deranged cult leader, and you’ve got a real nail-biter. It also helps when you have a lead like Hinds who eats the role so convincingly that you actually believe him.
While The Ceremony is About to Begin is a decent watch, This House is Totally Haunted goes for the jugular. It’s better in every possible way than its predecessor. Perhaps that’s due to Hinds settling into the role, or Lynch’s taut, confident directing style, or the more interesting script. Whatever it is, it works. Endless possibilities await for a story that just begs to be a franchise. And who am I to argue with that? Hinds commands a dark and charming presence that needs to be explored further.
Sean Nichols Lynch’s This House is Totally Haunted has enough creep factor to unnerve you and a pinch of humor to alleviate the higher pressure. More than anything, it’s the kind of indie that has “cult classic” written all over it. It might take some time, but it’ll be discovered for years to come.
This House is Totally Haunted screens at the Unnamed Footage Festival this Saturday (March 28) at 4:15 p.m. at the Balboa Theater in San Francisco.
