Buried Alive Film Festival returns to the Plaza

Atlanta's autumn has a long-standing tradition for anyone who likes their cinema strange, and it's back again. The Buried Alive Film Festival returns for its 19th edition from November 5 to 8 at the Historic Plaza Theatre, four nights of curated horror shorts, features and a Featured Filmmaker of the Year. It's the city's premier horror festival, and for a lot of people, the highlight is the curated short-film blocks, which pull together humor, gothic horror, the supernatural and gore from around the world.

There's a bit of history behind the name. Gorehound Productions has been bringing independent horror to Atlanta every year since 2008, and the festival itself grew out of the Atlanta Horrorfest, which split off to become the Buried Alive Film Fest. Lucas Godfrey and Nik Morgan of Splatter Cinema are the names behind it; Godfrey is the owner and founder, now serving as events director, while Blake Myers is at the helm as festival director. In 2024, Shannon Ford Thompson took charge as head of the Atlanta Horror Society and founder of the indie production house Rock with Siren, with Myers and Godfrey on the advisory board.

None of this would feel the same without the venue. The Plaza Theatre is Atlanta's oldest operating independent cinema, running since 1939, and it's a real cornerstone for cinephiles, with 35mm film, 4K restorations and horror-comedy screenings. Beyond the festival, it keeps the Silver Scream Spook Show — a live stage production with magic and comedy — and Friday night Rocky Horror Picture Show screenings. The building is currently in the middle of a $4 million restoration and revitalization, the largest investment in its 83-year history, made possible by a new 25-year lease signed by owner Christopher Escobar.

If you're trying to figure out how to do it, tickets are available for individual films and short blocks, but the all-inclusive festival pass at $80 is the recommended way to go if you want to see it all. The short blocks are what the festival is best known for, and they're the easiest way to catch a lot of different voices in one sitting.

For context on what to expect, the 16th edition back in 2023 gave a good sense of the range. It opened with Kike Narcea's Spanish action-comedy-horror I'll Crush Ya'll, which had won the Audience Award at Fantastic Fest, and ran through a Japanese Yokai Monsters feature, an anthology about a sexual parasite, and a 10th-anniversary screening of the indie horror Demon's Rook. The 17th edition landed in November 2024, so the festival has a steady rhythm of coming back every autumn. Whether you're a diehard horror fan or just looking for something different to do in early November, four nights of cult and underground cinema at one of the city's oldest theaters is hard to beat.