‘Snapshot’ Found Footage Ripper Horror Lands at Dark Star

A pinhole camera, a stack of wax cylinders and an all-women ghost-hunting society convinced that Jack the Ripper was not a man. That is what Snapshot presents as recovered 1888 footage, and Dark Star Pictures has now taken the film for North America.

Michael Repsch negotiated the deal for Dark Star with alief, the London sales company handling the title, and the announcement landed ahead of the American Film Market. Dark Star has a theatrical run set for early 2027, with a digital release to follow.

The Camera Does the Scaring

Dark Star’s announcement describes a pinhole camera style and a 1:1 aspect ratio, and the official synopsis promises footage that is cut off and distorted at its edges. That restriction is the best idea in the pitch. A found-footage film whose camera physically cannot show you the thing in the room has solved the problem the rest of the genre keeps tripping over.

Per the official synopsis, an amateur inventor builds the modified camera to document women who believe the Whitechapel killer is a creature rather than a man. The newspapers he reads are unregulated, the people he interviews have been fed misinformation, and his own account is unreliable.

Three Festival Wins Before the US Deal

Snapshot world premiered at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and played FrightFest London in August. Alief lists 2026 wins for Best Feature Film at the Gloucester Film Festival, Best British Feature Film at Worcester and the Visual Spirit Award at SOIFF. It competes for the Golden Alexander Film Forward prize at Thessaloniki in November and sits on the fifteen-film longlist for the Raindance Maverick Award at this year’s British Independent Film Awards.

Reviewing it out of Edinburgh for The List, Eddie Harrison called the film “an ingenious nightmare in monochrome.” Variety’s review headline filed it as a nifty calling-card debut.

“A dynamic debut film from director Joseph Archer, Snapshot reimagines the found-footage genre through 1880s London,” said Jim Brunzell, Dark Star’s director of festivals and theatrical, in the announcement, describing the result as a disturbing Victorian-era whodunit.

The Second Ripper Horror Moving This Autumn

Tom Stourton plays the inventor behind the camera. Genre audiences know him from All My Friends Hate Me, the 2021 paranoia comedy he co-wrote and led. Cathy Wippell produces alongside Archer through their UK company Silicon Gothic and appears in the film, with Hazel Rogers, Lydia Helen, Nadia Lamin, Rosie-Bella Johnson, Ishtar Currie-Wilson and Freya Parks filling out the society. Germany’s Fieber Film, India’s TrainTripper and Canada’s Serge Cedrick Films came aboard as co-producers and financiers. Dark Star’s announcement calls the film Archer’s debut feature.

It is also not the only Whitechapel horror in motion right now. László Nemes is developing Sickert, his own account of the Ripper case, which puts two very different period horror projects on the same unsolved murders.

Thessaloniki hosts the international premiere in November, ahead of the Dark Star release.