Panic Fest 2026 Coverage
Projection review
Making movies can be Hell. Making them with your dead father can be worse.
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
Projection
Directed by Evan Samaras and George Scoufaras
Written by Evan Samaras and George Scoufaras
Starring Nicholas Runfolo, Pamela Carey and Brad Hamler
Projection Review
Projection is a descent into madness movie. It’s a particular subgenre that I enjoy quite a bit as long as there are two key aspects attached to it. First…the performance of the person playing the character descending into said madness has to be strong. Without that…you have a movie ripe to fall off the rails. Second…the story needs to have a hook interesting enough to hold your attention throughout the film. It can be fun/scary/fascinating to watch the lead character lose their grip on reality. But it won’t sustain an entire full length feature unless there’s a strong secondary facet to it. Imagine a movie about someone losing their mind over a traffic jam and the actor is giving a subpar performance. You’d effectively have nothing to care about.
The good news is that Projection isn’t about a traffic jam and it doesn’t feature a poor lead performance. It checks my two boxes for an effective and engaging descent into madness very well. Nicholas Runfolo gives a great performance in the lead role of Thomas. His troubles begin with the death of his father. Unresolved issues surrounding that put a strain on him and lead him to a surprising place. He decides to write and direct a movie as a way to cope. The problem is…he’s doing it with his dead father (Brad Hamler).
Projection leads Thomas down an ultimately deadly path where he can no longer separate fiction from reality. Whatever closure he was hoping to get working on the film is turned upside down by the presence of his domineering, pushy and still deceased father. Projection ultimately becomes somewhat about Thomas’s fears of becoming a father himself. His girlfriend Sam (Pamela Carey) gets a firsthand view of Thomas’s obsession turned madness. She’s powerless to stop the descent…and only adds another layer to it with that whole potential fatherhood issue.
The fun in Projection, if one wants to call it that, comes from watching Thomas make his doomed movie. You could easily take the story as an allegory for the passion it takes to make a film…and how easy it can be to cross the line. Several scenes play out no differently than a story about working for a difficult director would. You know…other than the totally dead father the director is interacting with the whole time. If this exercise was meant to bring Thomas closer to his late father…I guess the good news is that it worked. The bad news is that everyone, including Thomas, is in mortal danger.
Writer/directors Evan Samaras and George Scoufaras nail the feeling of an obsessive person trying to make an ultra-independent film. Using the trauma of unresolved issues, fears of possible impending fatherhood and grief over the loss of a parent to throw a perfect storm at the director gives Projection a lot to work with. It melds them together to put its lead into an overwhelming situation…and lets him take it out on everyone around him. As a story also about independent film production…it really fits.
Scare Value
Descent into madness movies can be difficult if you don’t connect to the character’s plight or care about what they’re doing. Projection finds a way to make both sides work. Watching Thomas make his movie is an engaging plot. Watching him do it with his dead father makes it fascinating. As you would expect…things turn dangerous quickly. A strong lead performance and a fittingly swift descent give Projection the momentum it needs to keep you watching while everything unravels.
