Pitched with the concept “if A24 made horror in the days of shot-on-video,” indie press Filthy Loot’s horror collection Soft Ceremonies absolutely hits its marks.
For the uninitiated, A24 is an indie film production company whose horror movies are known for arthouse elements and getting under people’s skin. “Shot-on-video” is exactly what it sounds like: think The Blair Witch Project or Hoop Dreams. So this book asked its authors to think high-brow, low-tech horror.
The four stories in Soft Ceremonies vary in subgenre, style and trope. The voices are different, the characters are different, the impact is different. But they each feel cinematic and they each made enough of an impact on me that I had to read them in separate sittings.
I am not a proper horror fan but I have a large collection of horror movies and I’ve read a handful of horror books. I’m not new to the genre. I want to emphasize this because I was unprepared to be so creeped out, unnerved, haunted.
The first story in the collection A Room in Father’s House by Charlene Elsby is full of body horror and focuses on a woman seeking salvation from a punitive church. It made me sick to my stomach. I shuddered at one point. As the stakes escalated, I waited for resolution. This isn’t a teen-movie slasher, though. This collection doesn’t play the narrative-bell-curve game.
I had to take breaks reading the second story, By the Witchroot, By the Dawn by Joe Koch. Like the first story, this one is visually grounded and even overwhelming at times. It follows a young man who watches a videotape he found under his parents bed, the contents of which haunt him indefinitely. Somehow grounded and gorey while being a little abstract, this piece was wildly creepy.
The third piece, Meslithe by Sam Richard, deals with the way our lives become open to suggestion when we are bereaved. A normal, widowed man is doing his best to survive his new grief and, in going through the motions, finds himself unable to escape another kind of haunting. Meslithe felt like a campy horror trope (it isn’t though — I can’t quite place whether it’s a haunted house or a cursed object or just a vulnerable person in the wrong place at the wrong time…) was matured and allowed to reach its potential.
The final piece, Sigil by Jon Steffens is an upsetting contemporary take on the classic question: is the character crazy or is this really happening? We see how these events could have transpired, but we also see a mother falling apart while no one around her notices.
The unsettling collection also comes with a soundtrack on cassette that is eerie and fitting for the project. This press is clearly invested in the experience of consuming their products, and is careful to curate an atmosphere around them.
There were times reading this book when I was genuinely scared. It was more than the faint idea that someone could be behind me, more than walking faster through the house in the dark. This collection reminds us that what is most frightening is outside of our control. Random chance events could haunt us and we’d be unable to stop them. These stories will stay with me.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s July 2025 issue.
