Lenore

Writer-director David Ward’s Lenore weaponizes the internet rabbit hole, following one man’s compulsive need to turn a digital mystery into something he can control. Co-written with Josie Hess, the film sets up a pressure-cooker descent where the more the truth hides, the harder the obsession grows.

Max Wren (Nicholas Jaquinot) is an unemployed filmmaker who has holed himself up in the basement of his suburban home to work on an obsession he’s had for a very long time. His obsession is with an internet personality known as Lenore (Ruby Duncan). Ever since she appeared on the scene, Max has been documenting her life, recording every livestream and collecting every social media post.

Then all of a sudden, Lenore has gone missing with no goodbye or farewell. She just vanished off the net. The world, of course, has its opinion, but Max is convinced he can “solve” her disappearance by creating a tribute-documentary from clips, posts, and fragments, then convert it all to VHS. But this recluse is on the verge of full stalker status, as the clips he replays of Lenore begin to blur with reality while, ironically, he ignores the reality of his own life.

“Max begins to see visions of Lenore reaching out to him, sending him over the edge.”

At one point, his friend Sam (Samuel Macdonald) barges into his studio and berates him for how pathetic his life has become. These physically brutal moments turn mental when Max begins to see visions of Lenore reaching out to him, sending him over the edge.

I love Lenore because it’s a movie about insanity and for the insane. What filmmaker David Ward and Josie Hess do so well is pull you right into the mind of poor Max. Nicholas Jaquinot gives an incredible performance of a mentally wounded man dragged to the bottom of the pit of despair. His interactions with the real world with Sam and later with the police are so vivid that you can see every thought in his head without Max uttering a single word.

Ruby Duncan, as Lenore—an influencer dancing between the worlds of streaming and OnlyFans—feels authentic. She has her own character arc on display in clips, and then there’s the way she haunts Max’s dreams and conscious thoughts. It gets real spooky real fast, and kudos to these ingenious indie filmmakers.

In the end, David Ward’s Lenore lands as a bruising, lo-fi nightmare powered by Nicholas Jaquinot’s unraveling and the film’s smart, murky visuals. It’s the kind of horror that feels uncomfortably current—because the internet has become the new closet that monsters crawl out of.

Lenore will have its world premiere at the Horror-on-Sea Film Festival on January 23, 2026.