Verena (2026)
Tobee Collins made Verena with no filmmaking experience at all. None. He taught himself to write, to shoot, to light, to edit and to score, and then went and did every one of those jobs himself: writer, director, producer, cinematographer, editor and composer. It was his first film, and it gave him enough confidence to go on and start his own production company, The Midnight Collective Productions. It is worth knowing that going in, because it reframes everything that follows.
Verena stars Carolyn Hester as a young woman walking home alone through quiet, dimly lit streets, with Jacob Santos as the masked figure who may or may not be following her. It closes out the Northern Horror Fest in Bergenfield, New Jersey, a small, defiantly grassroots one-day festival now in its eighth year, built to give independent horror and thriller filmmakers a room, an audience and a proper shot at being seen. Collins sent it over ahead of the screening.
We've all been there: walking home alone on a dimly lit street, the hairs on the back of your neck standing up because you're absolutely convinced something is trailing just behind you. It's a primal, universal dread, and it's exactly the frequency Tobee Collins tunes into with Verena, a psychological horror short I caught as an early screener for the Northern Horror Fest in Bergenfield, New Jersey.
The premise is deceptively simple: a young woman returns to her apartment, only to find her sense of safety unraveling as strange occurrences suggest she isn't alone. It's a cracking setup that immediately hooks you into her escalating paranoia.
For a short film, it does a remarkably good job of building that suffocating atmosphere. Collins is highly effective at staging the tension, particularly in the sequences where a shadowy, masked figure is seen creeping around the edges of the apartment. The direction plays brilliantly on that deeply ingrained fear of a violated sanctuary, making you hyper-aware of every creaking floorboard and darkened corner. It's a very grounded, relatable kind of terror, and the film milks that vulnerability for all it's worth without resorting to cheap, out-of-nowhere jump scares.
However, the picture isn't without its technical hiccups, which unfortunately muddy the waters right when it needs to be crystal clear. The film builds toward a "twist" that forces the protagonist to face something far more disturbing than mere paranoia. The problem? I didn't really understand it. To be fair, the sound mixing was a bit off during the climax; the soundtrack was cranked up so loud that it completely swallowed the crucial dialogue. I might have missed a vital piece of exposition there.
Verena is a pretty good little short that knows exactly how to tap into our most basic, late-night anxieties. Tobee Collins has crafted a tense, visually engaging piece of horror that delivers some genuinely effective scares, even if the final act stumbles over its own audio mixing. It's a highly watchable effort that proves Collins has a sharp eye for suspense, even if the execution of the finale leaves you scratching your head just a bit.
A word on that sound mix, now that I know the whole story. Collins scored this film himself, having never scored anything in his life, on the same project where he was also teaching himself to shoot, light and edit. Balancing a soundtrack against dialogue is a craft that takes people years to get right, and it is the one place here where the seams show. That is not a reason to mark him down harder. If anything it is the opposite. He built a genuinely tense, well-staged, atmospheric horror short entirely on his own, from nothing, on his first attempt, and the only thing that trips it up is the single hardest technical discipline in the whole process. Fix the mix and this is a very good short indeed. He has the eye. The rest is learnable, and I suspect he will learn it fast.
Reviewed from a screener provided by the director ahead of the film's screening at the Northern Horror Fest in Bergenfield, New Jersey, where Verena closes the festival on 17 July 2026.
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