Snapshot (Frightfest 2026)

The year is 1888, and the British Isles are full of wonder and horror. In Leeds, the French pioneer Louis Le Prince has just invented the first moving-picture camera, whilst down in smog-bound London, William Friese-Greene and Alexander Parkes are conducting early experiments in celluloid; next door in Whitechapel, a vicious killer stalks the streets, savaging sex workers and stirring up a frenzy in the sensationalism-hungry Victorian populace. Now, in 2026, director Joseph Archer harnesses the light of the magic lantern to expose one of the darkest horrors lurking in the shadows of London’s history in Snapshot, a film which seeks to suggest that our bloody past and supposedly “enlightened” present are not as different as we might like to think.

Making its English Premiere on the 31^st of August as part of 2026’s Tubi FrightFest, Snapshot is an experimental found-footage film presented entirely through the lens of a Victorian pinhole movie-camera, the creation of unseen operator Tamworth (Tom Stourton); through Tamworth’s artificial eye, we follow an all-female society of paranormal investigators, working and upper-class alike, headed by Whitechapel girl-gang leader Molly O’Brien (Lydia Helen), who believes that the infamous murderer known as ‘Jack the Ripper’ is too savage and animalistic in his methods to be of this mortal plane. As the killings continue, we learn that not all is as it seems – the local papers are spreading disinformation to capitalise on the Ripper hysteria, the streets are full of grifters offering “evidence” in order to make a quick buck, arguments break out between the ladies over the legitimacy of spiritualism in solving the case, and even Tamworth’s documentation seems to be more of a hindrance than it helps. As the society becomes more closely connected to the murders by the day, can anybody be trusted? And will they come face-to-face with a mortal man, or something far more unexplainable in origin?

Snapshot opens with a few lines of text establishing that the footage you are about to see is compiled from a series of newly-discovered Victorian film reels, alongside a number of wax cylinders containing audio recordings which accompany the footage. This means, in practice, that Tamworth secretly invented the first ever sound film camera, and a lot of the filming techniques utilised throughout are knowingly almost identical to those seen in most modern found-footage horror films, even if some characters respond to the existence of the moving image with a little more unfamiliarity. A large degree of suspension of disbelief is required whilst watching Snapshot, particularly given the size and impracticality of early cameras and sound recording equipment, but the historical anachronisms of the film technology used, whilst somewhat frustrating, are largely irrelevant when considering the central cinematic “magic trick” that makes Snapshot so compelling from the start – that being the very convincing effect of taking a video camera back to the streets of Victorian London, and a notorious part of the city’s history that modern audiences were never meant to see in motion.

I frequently found myself astounded by how brilliantly 1800s London is realised throughout Snapshot, not least when it comes to the glimpses of the city skyline that are visible in a couple of shots; there’s a sequence which takes place on the banks of the Thames which I cannot for the life of me figure out how it was achieved, and I can’t imagine the amount of work that must have gone into developing not only these historical scenes, but the entire Victorian aesthetic of the film as a whole. The attention to detail in Snapshot’s production design only makes its horror aspects all the more unnerving, particularly if you went to secondary school in the UK and were given an unexpected visual lesson in how the murder of Mary Kelly was the first crime scene to be photographed; an early scene in which the body of Catherine Eddowes is discovered in Mitre Square is all the more upsetting and hard to watch with the knowledge of what is being depicted onscreen, and that sequence does accurately produce a sensation that all the best found-footage horrors do – a feeling that you’re watching something that you’re not meant to.

Yet Snapshot is by no means merely revelling in the aesthetics of the Victorian macabre that have imprinted themselves upon generation after generation of Brits like an ancestral memory. Snapshot is the first feature film by Archer and writer-producer Cathy Wippell’s production company Silicon Gothic, whose aim is to make fiercely political horror works which expose the monsters of our modern age, having previously made the socially-conscious eco-horror short Black Samphire (2024), which is a thoroughly admirable mission and one which I wholeheartedly support. In the case of this film, Archer uses the details and imagery of this well-known historic crime to explore topical issues such fake news, media misinformation, the power of the rumour in the information age, and how all of these are used to scapegoat, demonise, and create further victims as abusers get away scot-free. The best way in which Archer and Wippell explore these themes is through the use of the camera and the found-footage format itself, with its active presence in the leading ladies’ lives creating an inherent and disturbing imbalance of power; though ostensibly their to assist O’Brien and company in their hunt for the paranormal, the camera’s presence and use frequently come off as intrusive, voyeuristic, and sometimes even exploitative, and you wonder how much assistance Tamworth is actually providing by hiding behind the lens as opposed to actively participating. It was in these moments that I was most reminded of a classic horror work which had to have been a key influence upon the Silicon Gothic team whilst making this, though I fear that name-dropping it would give away far too much, though a lot of the film’s reveals are fairly apparent from the first few frames.

Tonally and structurally, Snapshot is a bit of an odd one, hopping between mockumentary-esque humour and gruelling, devastating horror with a serious feminist edge at a moment’s notice, and not much of a margin in-between. Between the large stretches of light, silly humour, this is a dark film, more gruelling than one might expect even given the subject matter – I cannot overstate how difficult some of this is to watch, both in its form and in its content, particularly as the plot progresses and the vibes become increasingly grave. There are lots of odd asides (such as brief visit to the troubled artist Louis Wain), the occasional repetitive sections, and the film’s unusual composition – whilst making some sense in context – makes it very hard to follow towards the end, not least given that there are so many different characters whose lives and deaths are shown partially out-of-sync. For all the odd inclusions, there are also strange omissions, particularly given the themes of misuse of the media and how the public response to the Ripper murders was a precursor to modern true-crime fandom; though not 100% necessary to the story being told, it is curious that the film does not contain any mention of the dubiously legitimate “Ripper letters” sent to newspapers, as well as the antisemitic graffiti that was found near the site where Eddowes was killed, though I am glad that a reference is made (no matter how brief) to how the hunt for the Ripper was used to stir up racist anti-immigrant hatred, something which is all-too-topical.

Without spoiling anything, the ending of Snapshot takes a hard turn into experimental and stylised territory which will function better for some viewers than it does for others, and whilst I understand and applaud the overall aim of the film, I personally found that the final few sequences detracted from its effectiveness and somewhat contradicted the central message of the piece. Nonetheless, I believe Snapshot to be an interesting and ambitious piece which is frequently effective and often rather disquieting, and it has me excited to see what the very talented folks at Silicon Gothic have in store – they’re doing exactly what British horror filmmakers should be doing in this current socio-political climate, and with a properly vicious and grisly edge too. Part ghost-hunt, part slasher, part something far darker – for all its flaws and anachronisms, Snapshot feels like a live camera feed from hell, and that hell is Victorian Whitechapel.

ROBYN’S ARCHIVE – SNAPSHOT (FRIGHTFEST 2026)