James Cullen Bressack Talks I Have Proof with More Horror and His Return to Horror
By Seth Metoyer | More Horror
I Have Proof Heads to Fantastic Fest as James Cullen Bressack Revisits His Horror Roots
James Cullen Bressack wants his new horror film to feel like a tape you were never supposed to find. Having known James for about fifteen years, going back to More Horror’s coverage of My Pure Joy and Hate Crime, that sounds like a conversation worth having. His career has taken him through action films, thrillers, and an expanding slate of producing work. Now I Have Proof brings him back to the raw horror that first connected us, with a VHS-C approach and a particular interest in how quickly an audience decides what it believes.
The film is scheduled to make its world premiere at Fantastic Fest in Austin on Monday, September 21, 2026, at 5 p.m. CT, according to the publicity information supplied to More Horror, a schedule also reported by ComingSoon.
Bressack wrote and directed it, and the official synopsis keeps its mouth reasonably shut: “Alex has proof. He needs you to see it. I HAVE PROOF is a psychological descent where reality is never quite what it seems.” I appreciate a synopsis that leaves something for the actual movie to do. James’s comments to More Horror offer a much fuller sense of the thinking behind it without walking us through the plot.
“I HAVE PROOF is probably the most personal horror film I’ve ever made,” Bressack told More Horror. “I wanted to strip away everything that makes modern horror feel polished and safe and instead create something that feels like you found a tape you were never supposed to see.”
What grabs me most is that final point. A movie comes right out and says it’s entertainment, even if it’s about someone having a really terrible night. But a recording that seems like it slipped out of someone’s hands brings a whole different vibe. You start wondering who made it, why they held on to it, and if watching it makes you a witness—or just an asshole with a working VCR.
“There’s something inherently unsettling about the imperfections of VHS-C, the moments where the camera keeps rolling when it shouldn’t, and the feeling that what you’re watching might actually be real,” he continued.
“I wanted the audience to feel like they were discovering something rather than simply watching a movie.”
Conventional editing can give us the relief of moving on. Let a moment hang around beyond its apparent purpose and the viewer starts searching it for an explanation. I like the unease in that idea: the camera is still running, and we have to decide why.
I covered and helped promote those early films, and the friendship developed alongside the work, which is how a surprising amount of independent filmmaking happens. You start by talking about somebody’s movie and eventually find yourself involved in conversations that change the direction of your own career. James helped open those doors for me. He gave me my first film composing opportunity and helped get Blood Harvest (2023) made, a film I co-wrote, produced, and scored. That is part of why this particular return to horror means something to me.
There is also a record of the early days sitting in the More Horror archive. In 2012, our correspondent Dawna Lee Heising interviewed James at Shriekfest, and the conversation catches him with several projects already behind him and more taking shape. Asked how many features he had directed, he begins with “three features,” then corrects himself: “No, four features. Jesus.” He goes on to include his segments in two Theatre of the Deranged anthologies in that count, alongside My Pure Joy and Hate Crime. The moment still makes me chuckle. He is trying to answer a fairly straightforward question and has to stop for an internal production meeting.
He also talks about preparing to shoot Pernicious in Thailand, describing a budget larger than anything he had previously handled. “I’m being modest,” he says. “It’s much bigger than I’ve dealt with.” He discusses the country’s folklore and spirituality before adding that the film will be “extremely violent.” He has a new location, more resources, and an opportunity to expand his filmmaking, and he still makes sure everybody knows the violence is coming. Some priorities survive an increase in budget.
Near the end of that interview, James recommends Hate Crime to viewers with a strong stomach and brings More Horror into the conversation. “A lot of websites, including More Horror, said it’s one of the most disturbing movies made in the past, you know, couple years now.” He is recalling the response to a film he describes in the same interview as a found-footage home-invasion film concerned with racial tension. More than a decade later, his new comments return to recorded images and the uneasy relationship between seeing something and deciding what it means.
Between those conversations came films including Survive the Game and Darkness of Man, and work with actors such as Bruce Willis and Jean-Claude Van Damme. His career as a director and producer moved well beyond the early horror projects More Horror had covered. What interests me now is his decision to work again with a form that depends so heavily on imperfection. Experience can give a filmmaker the confidence to take things away, even the things that normally help a movie look accomplished.
“The film is about perception, bias, and how quickly we decide what we believe,” James told More Horror.
“I wanted to put the audience in the position of someone who’s been handed a collection of tapes and has to figure out what happened. There isn’t a traditional narrator telling you what’s true or how you’re supposed to feel. You’re looking at evidence and forming your own conclusions.”
That gives the title some backbone. Calling something proof is already an argument. Alex wants us to see what he has, but the act of showing us cannot automatically settle what we should believe about it.
The idea has a long literary ancestry in stories presented as recovered letters, diaries, and documents. Those forms invite readers to behave like investigators, assembling a reality from whatever somebody has left behind. A camera adds the seductive feeling that we can check things for ourselves. We saw it happen, therefore we understand it. Except the frame has edges, the recording has a beginning and an ending, and somebody decided where to point the damn thing.
That is familiar territory outside the movies, too. Give people an ambiguous clip and a sufficiently confident caption, and somebody will have the case solved before the video finishes buffering. We tend to enjoy the feeling of recognizing the truth, particularly when it confirms something we already thought. I am curious about what James does with the space between the material Alex presents and the story a viewer constructs from it. The possibility of an audience confidently getting something wrong gives that premise an uncomfortable edge.
The next part of his explanation caught my attention as a composer. “I didn’t want to manipulate the audience,” he said.
“If you’re watching something that was actually recovered or submitted as evidence, there’s no composer coming in to tell you when you’re supposed to be scared or when you’re supposed to feel sympathy for somebody. I wanted the audience to have to sit with the footage and decide for themselves what they’re looking at.”
Having spent time doing exactly the job he is talking about, I appreciate the reasoning, even if he is politely explaining why somebody like me should stay the hell away from this particular movie.
Music can establish an emotional interpretation before an audience consciously arrives at one. Put something tender under a face and you invite sympathy; let something sour creep beneath the same image and that person starts looking suspicious. I enjoy that work. Of course, a filmmaker still shapes our experience through framing, editing, and what we are allowed to see. Taking away the score leaves one less emotional instruction, and that can make the task of interpreting a scene considerably less comfortable.
The publicity materials list Larsen Deane, Lilly Van der Meer, Augie Duke, B.J. Hendricks, Kelly Lynn Reiter, and David Josh Lawrence in the cast, with Sandaled Kid, JCB Pictures, and Robotic Donut as the production companies. James has given us plenty to consider ahead of the Fantastic Fest premiere while leaving the experience itself for audiences to discover. His description has my attention; the film will have to do the rest when it reaches the screen.
What stays with me personally is the distance between that Shriekfest conversation and this one. Back then, More Horror was still fairly new and covering a young filmmaker working through his early projects and looking toward a bigger production in Thailand.
Since then, James’s work has expanded, our friendship has continued, and his help became part of my own life making movies. I can be interested in the choices behind I Have Proof and proud of the person making them at the same time. After this many years, pretending those things exist in separate rooms would feel ridiculous.
There is one final moment in the 2012 interview that makes me smile. As the conversation wraps up, James points to the More Horror banner behind him and says, “I plugged you, Seth.” Fourteen years later, here we are again, with another horror film about to meet its audience and quite a bit of life having happened in between. I’m happy to keep helping people find his work, and after all these years, there’s something else I want to say: I’m proud of you, James.
