In a show of filmmaker confidence, the production team behind last year’s award-winning independent teen thriller It Needs Eyes is going on a theatrical release tour! When we saw this movie at last year’s Portland Horror Film Festival, it had won the Best Feature Film award. It also went on to win the best in show prize at three other festivals (Macabro in Mexico City, Show Low Film Festival, and the AMT International Film Festival), proving it has wide appeal.
Directors Zack Ogle and Aaron Pagniano turned a micro-budget film into a haunting coming-of-age tale of coping with grief and madness. Check out our full review of the film HERE, where I gave it ★★★★ out of ★★★★★. By year’s end, it finished as my #30 film out of 106 2025 films I watched last year, in a year replete with excellent horror films. For me, it finished ahead of the bigger-budget films The Monkey, The Long Walk, Rabbit Trap, and Together, to name but a few other good movies. Impressive!
Both Raquel Lebish and Isadora Leiva have star potential, and I hope they can parlay their performances in It Needs Eyes into more films (hopefully horror!) and use this film as their launching pad. This film has considerable texture and depth, exploring themes of technology addiction, emerging queer love, abandonment, obsessive detective work, and the dark web. It is a testament to the access to high-definition cameras and drones that Ogle and Pagniano crafted not only a compelling but also a beautiful story.
The Schedule:
The directors will be in attendance at each of these showings. Typical film distribution puts up all kinds of roadblocks for theatrical releases, so the filmmakers are pulling off a DIY effort in independent theaters across the country.
Cities/ Dates so far:
Columbus, Ohio – May 9 – Studio 35 (tickets available soon)
Winston-Salem, North Carolina – Mar 21 (venue and tickets TBA)
Cranford, New Jersey – May 7 (TICKETS)
Doylestown, Pennsylvania – May 15 (TICKETS)
Somerville, Massachusetts – May 26 (TICKETS)
With more screenings being organized in Connecticut, Vermont, New York, Louisiana, Tennessee, Georgia, and many more to come, to be announced and updated constantly on the studio’s social media and website.
Note: The Gainesville, Florida, show held on Feb 5 sold out! So, get your tickets soon!
The Director’s Statement:
When creating “It Needs Eyes”, we wanted to tap into this call of the void that so many of us have inside. Pairing that with themes of coming of age and passed-down familial trauma, we had long discussions about the kinds of videos that scared us as teenagers. We discussed how as young queer kids this was also a time we had become unmoored. Our illusions of our parents being perfect fading while our identities and place in the world didn’t make sense anymore. We had each been hit hard and fast with tragedies, meanwhile the unexplored depths online made it all seem so big, so daunting, so weird. One could just as easily find a bizarre cartoon of a nettle-obsessed mutant as they could a genuine beheading…or worse.”
The Scariest Things Mission:
We are in a golden age of horror movies. The studios are making serious box-office profits from original titles. Here’s the secret, though, little independent movies are ALWAYS creating original titles. Film Festivals have always been very good to us, and have opened our eyes to indie horror. I often describe what we do as operating in a fishbowl, with festivals, independent filmmakers, and actors looking to earn some SAG credits. We need them, and they need us. The Hollywood Reporter and Variety may go to Sundance and SXSW, but they don’t make the trip to the smaller festivals. We benefit by getting the first reviews on IMDb for these movies, and the filmmakers are always eager to give us interviews and support our reviews.
I was fortunate enough to interview Zack Ogle and producer Travis Campbell at the Hollywood Theater during the Portland Horror Film Festival, where they screened their film. It’s this kind of access within the horror community that is our lifeblood. We get deep insight into what it means to be an emerging filmmaker, and they get good press, even when the press can be difficult to muster. We all pull for each other, and this is a great example of the horror community’s synergy.
You can listen to my interview with them on my review post from last summer. Or, if you are already subscribed to our Podcast, check the feed for lt Needs Eyes from last June.
The It Needs Eyes Trailer:
One thing that we didn’t have at the time of the review was a trailer. Now we’ve got one for you to check out!
