Heraldry Paranormal (Frightfest 2026)

A spectre is haunting Yorkshire.

In the late 1960s, a family living on a council estate in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, claimed to have been terrorised by the apparition of a ‘black monk’ which hurled objects and violently attacked their youngest daughter – with the case eventually being adapted into the 2012 horror film When the Lights Went Out. Whilst modern-day visitors to Pontefract are unlikely to be savaged by a sinister minister from beyond the grave, they might bump into Ashley Nashville, director of Heraldry Paranormal (2026), a Yorkshire-set found-footage horror comedy which had its World Premiere at Tubi FrightFest 2026 as part of the festival’s First Blood strand.

The debut feature from Yorkshire-based production company Noisy Red Cinema, Heraldry Paranormal is a vlog-style romp that follows the titular team of internet paranormal investigators – made up of host Finlay (Jimmy Roberts), cameraman Seamus (Ashley Nashville), researcher Emerson (Tara Buranakul), and editor Blair (Parker Paige), the latter of whom is Finlay’s long-distance partner from across the pond. Together – in spirit, at least – they search for proof of the paranormal from Wakefield to Doncaster, though every one of their excursions to date has resulted in either disappointment or disaster. After months of uneventful episodes and online community beef, Finlay is just about ready to hang up his ghost-hunting hat and leave his life-long passion behind – but all that changes when the group accept a job from a terrified Pontefract couple that proves to be far more frightening and chaotic than they could have imagined; if this latest case is legitimate, Heraldry Paranormal will be the first people to definitively prove the existence of the supernatural – but will they live to upload the evidence?

Heraldry Paranormal is the latest in a long line of recent found-footage films to satirise internet ghost-hunting channels and social-media influencer culture, with films such as Deadstream (2022), Mean Spirited (2022) and Alan at Night (2025) tackling similar thematic territory. One of the things which makes Heraldry Paranormal interesting in comparison is the fact that it acknowledges this – after all, in a world where there are thousands of online paranormal investigation channels, and where internet algorithms prioritise sensationalism and excitement, what place is there in the social-media sphere for someone who sincerely wants to discover the truth behind the “supernatural”, no matter how mundane or unremarkable the results may often be? It’s this grounded aspect, regardless of the lighter tone, that makes Heraldry Paranormal a more successful picture for me than those aforementioned titles, and it helps that Noisy Red Cinema are so unapologetic about their independent, regional approach to filmmaking, which I find inherently endearing but even more so given how the film is rooted in its Yorkshire settings and character-driven storytelling. My closest point of comparison, both tonally and stylistically, would Graham Hughes’ Death of a Vlogger (2019) and Hostile Dimensions (2023), and I don’t mean that to detract from Heraldry Paranormal’s strengths as it own piece – I mean it as a strong compliment.

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The tonal focus of Heraldry Paranormal, as one might expect, is primarily on humour over horror, though that isn’t to say that it doesn’t contain some effectively disarming moments of terror. The film’s comedy is at its best when it is at its scrappiest, and not every joke lands, but the ones which do land hard, and I’m comfortable saying that there’s at least a laugh a minute here. Heraldry Paranormal does, unfortunately, fall into the horror-comedy trap of losing most of its comic elements once the scares start, but that isn’t a fatal flaw here as it might be to other movies, not least because one of the moments I laughed the hardest is during the third act as part of an otherwise tense sequence. All of the comic chops on display here are solid, though the obvious MVP is director Nashville as Seamus, who consistently gets the best lines and also has the benefit of a great Yorkshire accent.

Another great thing about Heraldry Paranormal, and one of its real selling points, is the diversity of its cast, and particularly the way in which it centres queer voices and characters. It’s a delight to see an independent British horror film be led by a pansexual ghost-hunter and his long-distance non-binary partner, and it’s even more wonderful to see that relationship be the emotional core of the story. The film’s LGBTQ+ focus also plays a large role in the effectiveness of its horror element, particularly once we’re introduced to frightened couple Violet (Lauren Grendon) and Gemma (Sekki Tabasuares), who inherited their home from Violet’s homophobic grandfather before learning they had also inherited a violent, hateful supernatural evil; one of the strongest and most emotionally resonant sequences in the entire film is a moment in which Grendon delivers an impassioned, righteously angry tirade against her dead grandpa and his bigoted ways, and you do genuinely get the impression that she is speaking from the heart.

The serious emotional beats of Heraldry Paranormal all really pay off, especially as the film goes on, though I will say that there are stretches between the scares, laughs, and heartfelt moments where the pacing lulls and the action drags, and part of me believes that the movie could have been a good 10 minutes shorter and would have been just as effective – if not better. However, I believe that the strengths of the piece largely outweigh these criticisms, and if you’re the kind of person who’ll be interested in Heraldry Paranormal from its premise alone, you’ll almost certainly be at least somewhat into what the Noisy Red Cinema team are doing throughout. I personally believe that the very fact that Heraldry Paranormal exists and was made by a team who clearly had so much fun putting it together is a blessing, particularly given the current state of the UK and how difficult it has been for minorities of all kinds over here as of late – I need to see more films being made by this cast and crew, and I need to see more diverse, ultra-indie horror passion projects like this being made in Britain, especially if they’re being made in the north of England. It’s an achievement and a half, and I’m so glad that it was selected to be part of such a major festival lineup.

ROBYN’S ARCHIVE – HERALDRY PARANORMAL