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Hey Jackrabbit Media friends,
Spooky season is upon us and we've got the perfect film for your horror movie marathon. Keep reading to find out more and check out all the exciting upcoming films and festivals for Jackrabbit Media!🎃
🎬 Read All About It:
Just in time for the Halloween season, Dread Central and Rue Morgue ran exclusive looks, including the trailer and a never before seen first clip for the horror, possession film The Mannequin. The film will be released this month on October 14th on digital and with physical media. Also announced by Dread Central, Delivery Run will have its North American release on October 17th, along with a theatrical run in select theaters.
The Hollywood News caught up with filmmakers Jake Myers (Kombucha) and Kurtis David Harder (Influencers) during FrightFest 2025 to talk UK premieres and Influencers as the closing night film.
🎥 Festival Announcements:
Kombucha continues it's festival run after bringing home the Audience Award from its hometown premiere at the Chicago Underground Film Festival. Catch its upcoming screenings at Rhode Island Film Festival, TOHorror Fantastic Film Fest, and Filmquest among others!
Christmas in Mistletoe shines across the screen at the Tryon International Film Festival this month.
Get ready to scream at Screamfest with The Mannequin pre-VOD release screening along with Influencers LA premiere.
📣 Up and Coming:
Jackrabbit is off to the American Film Market in November. Stayed tuned for more release announcements for the end of the year!
Thanks for continuing to support indie film!
– The Jackrabbit Media Team
'Liana Rojas discovers a downtown Los Angeles building where her sister died is haunted by a killer who dismembered his victims years earlier, forcing Liana and her friends to find a way and escape the sinister ghost before they lose their own limbs.'
John Berardo's latest possession horror film, The Mannequin, starring Isabella Gomez, Krystle Martin, Lindsay LaVanchy, Shireen Lai, and Maxwell Hamilton releases on digital and DVD/Blu-ray October 14th.
September 30th, 2025 - Rue Morgue EXCLUSIVE: Don't be scared, she's just there to watch in the never before seen clip of The Mannequin.
Rue Morgue dropped the exclusive just in time for Halloween.
September 10th, 2025 - Dread Central EXCLUSIVE: Dress her up or dress her down, she's always dressed to kill.
Dread Central gave fans a first look at the trailer for John Berardo's The Mannequin.
September 4th, 2025 - Dread Central EXCLUSIVE: He's just trying to get by, but survival doesn't come easy on these icy roads.
Delivery Run is being released by Saban Films on digital and VOD on October 17th, 2025. The film will also be in select theaters the same day.
September 3rd, 2025 - The Hollywood News INTERVIEW: The cast and crew of Influencers caught up with THN to tease the thrilling sequel and the ever enigmatic CW.
Influencers premiered at FrightFest 2025 as the coveted closing night film.
September 2nd, 2025 - The Hollywood News INTERVIEW: Catch director Jake Myers interview with THN as he talks all things Kombucha and the creative process for making his film come to life.
Kombucha screened twice at FrightFest 2025 to excited crowds, followed by a plethora of shining reviews.
'A young woman steps away from her chaotic life to work at a fire lookout tower, but things take a sinister turn when strange, otherworldly events begin to occur.'
Lookout is available digitally and on DVD/Blu-ray NOW!
Jackrabbit Media will be in attendance and taking meetings at the American Film Market November 11th-16th.
Location: Fairmont Century Plaza, Suite 1011
Christmas in Mistletoe
October 11th at 5:00pm, Tryon Theatre
October 11th at 8:00pm, Tryon Theatre
Purchase tickets HERE.
The Jurassic Games: Extinction
Directed by: Ryan Bellgardt
'In a dystopian future, contestants are forced into a virtual reality game where they must battle dinosaurs and each other to the death.'
Cannibal Mukbang
Directed by: Aimee Kuge
'An introverted nerd finds himself dangerously deep inside the crazy world of mukbanging after he falls head over heels for a mysterious woman.'
John Berardo - Director (The Mannequin)
Originally from Norman, Oklahoma, John always had the drive to expand his creative boundaries. Before starting his MFA at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, John received a BA from UCLA in Theater with a minor in Film, Television, and Digital Media. In 2013 John wrote and directed a short horror film, Dembanger, for the USC Media Institute for Social Change. The short received positive reviews and inspired his first film Initiation. In 2014 he directed iLA for Armani’s Films of City Frames, premiering at TIFF. The same year, John directed the public service announcement Post and Text Responsibly for CBS2-KCAL9, receiving a Los Angeles Emmy nomination.
In 2020, his feature debut, Dembanger, was selected to premiere at SXSW, Screamfest and Sitges, theatrically released domestically and worldwide in 2021 by XYZ Films, Saban Films and Lionsgate Entertainment under the new title, Initiation. John's second feature, The Mannequin, went into production in 2023 under the SAG interim agreement and is set to be released by Jackrabbit Media fall 2025.
JRM: As someone known for Initiation, how did your prior work in horror/slasher feed into The Mannequin?
John: With Initiation, I learned how powerful it can be to center a story around a group of women whose bond feels unbreakable, and that stayed with me. The chemistry between those three girls carried this collective “final girl” energy, it fuels the heart of horror. That was really the seed that carried from Initiation to The Mannequin, starting from that emotional core of connection and resilience. From there, I wanted to step into new territory. I’ve always loved the slasher form and I wanted to craft something that feels like my own spin on the paranormal, blurring the lines between the knife-in-the-dark tension of a slasher and the dreamy, uncanny dread of the supernatural. Almost like my own take on that Nightmare on Elm Street vibe, where horror feels both visceral and surreal at the same time.
JRM: Is there a personal or emotional connection you have with the themes (grief, haunting, obsession, etc.) in The Mannequin?
John: The Mannequin is deeply personal. The movie, and the mannequin itself, became a metaphor for my experience during the pandemic. Overnight, the world we thought we knew shifted, and I found myself clinging to the version of my life before March 7, 2020. I obsessed over “what could have been,” and in what felt like the blink of an eye, a year of loss and grief had already passed. By 2021, I had to confront the reality that my friendships and relationships had been strained, even fractured, by the way I had shut myself off while grieving in isolation. Writing The Mannequin became my way of facing that, of turning those feelings into something tangible. It was, in many ways, the process that allowed me to release the past and begin moving forward.
JRM: How do you see your own artistic trajectory evolving from Initiation to this film?
John: When I look back at Initiation, I see a film born out of my love for the 90s slasher, but also a film that wanted to challenge the genre, to say something about social media, misogynistic culture on college campuses and how those patterns echo in horror itself. With The Mannequin, the impulse was different. This time, it came from a far more personal place, without the weight of an agenda. It became less about showcasing what I admire in the art form, and more about expressing who I am as an artist and the emotions I needed to translate into a story.
JRM: In The Mannequin, the ghost of a past serial killer plays a key role. How did you conceptualize the nature of the haunt — literal, metaphorical, or both?
John: The line between the literal and the metaphorical is intentionally blurry in The Mannequin. Jack exists as a spirit that seems to intervene directly in the lives of women who step foot in his building, but at the same time, the choices they make and the pain they inflict on themselves and each other speak to something deeper, the weight of trauma, memory, and cultural violence. I wanted the haunting to function on both levels, as a literal presence that drives the horror forward, and as a metaphorical mirror reflecting the characters’ inner struggles and the themes pulsing underneath the story.
JRM: Given the film’s violent elements (dismemberment, etc.), how did you balance shock/horror with narrative meaning?
John: For me, what makes horror truly frightening isn’t the gore, it’s the characters and the situations they’re trapped in. Violence can be effective, but only if it serves the story. I’ve found that showing just enough to let the audience’s imagination wander is often far scarier than putting every detail on screen in an exploitative way. One of the themes I’m drawn to is how horror has historically exploited women and women’s bodies, and to me that exploitation is the real horror of our world. Because of that, I’m very conscious about how much violence I choose to show. If it tips too far, it risks undermining the power of those themes. The balance comes from making sure the fear lingers in the audience’s mind, not from how graphic the image is.
JRM: How did you collaborate with your cinematographer to create suspense, reveal scares, or play with light/shadows? Especially with such a great location in the warehouse.
John: From the beginning, Jonathan Pope and I knew we wanted the film to feel like a “Hitchcock vogue cover,” a visual language that would let us play with shadows, angular lines, and the elegance of suspense. That approach gave us a kind of playground where every frame could hold tension, every shadow could hide a secret, and every reveal felt crafted. The film was also a fiercely collaborative production, it was the middle of both strikes, we had an ultra-low budget and only 12 days to shoot, so what could have been a limitation turned into a strength. Once we discovered Loft 1923 in downtown Los Angeles, the space became a canvas, and our team moved like a well-oiled machine, finding creative solutions, pushing each other, and squeezing every drop of atmosphere out of that location. It felt less like making a movie against the odds, and more like a collective of artists all chasing the same vision, determined to bring this story to life.
JRM: Where do you think The Mannequin fits within contemporary horror? What do you hope it brings to the genre that’s fresh?
John: I think The Mannequin slips into that space where horror has been evolving lately, the kind of films that feel as much like a psychological fever dream as they do a supernatural story. It’s a ghost tale on the surface, but underneath it’s really about how the past keeps haunting us, whether through trauma, obsession, or the systems we’re trapped in. What I hope feels fresh is the way it fuses tones that don’t usually collide, the sharp edges of a slasher with the slow-burn dread of a haunting. We leaned into noir-inspired visuals, heavy shadows and stark contrasts, almost like the ghost itself is etched into the style of the film. And thematically, it’s about confronting taboos, particularly around misogyny and the ways violence repeats itself across generations. For me, the “ghost” isn’t just a phantom in the room, he’s also the memory, the metaphor, the thing you can’t escape no matter how much you try. That’s where the film breathes, in the blur between the literal and the symbolic, the horror you see and the horror you feel.
JRM: Can you talk about any specific scene that was particularly difficult—or satisfying—to bring to life?
John: The most demanding day on set was without question the 1950s sequence. We set out to capture it with the precision and style of a classic film from that era, which meant ambitious dolly moves, long masters, and an attention to detail that devoured time. For a while it felt like we were slipping behind, the pressure was real, but then after lunch we pulled off this brutally complex “ax-to-the-head” shot. The whole crew moved in sync, and the second we nailed it, the energy on set completely shifted. Suddenly we weren’t just back on schedule, we were soaring. It was exhausting, but it was also one of the most exhilarating, electric days of the entire shoot.
JRM: After The Mannequin, what kinds of stories do you want to tell next?
John: I have a few scripts I’ve been developing that build on the themes I explored in Initiation and The Mannequin, but in new, evolved ways. One I’m especially excited about is a queer monster movie set in Joshua Tree, a story about sexual awakening that blends the raw energy of a slasher with the surreal allure of monster and erotic cinema. I’m also diving into novel adaptations, bringing books that have stayed with me for years into a new cinematic life. Whatever comes next, I want it to surprise, to push boundaries, and of course, to leave audiences with a twist they won’t see coming.
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