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Film

The Once and Future Smash

A horror mockumentary exploring the legacy of a supposed cult slasher and the two men who played its masked killer.

Film

End Zone 2

A deliberately faux-lost slasher that connects to the world of The Once and Future Smash.

Film

Fat Fleshy Fingers

2023 body-horror comedy anthology; Michael wrote, produced, edited, and performed in the segment “The King of Carrot Flowers.”

Film

Magnetic

An experimental science-fiction feature built around a strange and unstable reality.

Film

TEN

An ensemble mystery-thriller in which ten women find themselves caught in a deadly puzzle.

Film

The Ringing

Body-horror short by Brandon Scullion, featuring Michael as a man driven to extremes by a mysterious ringing.

Film

Hacking at Leaves

Documentary by Johannes Grenzfurthner exploring history, technology, and the politics of making art.

Film

Bart & Bobbi Kill Each Other

Two long-time roommates turn resentment into mayhem in a short by Aaron Barrocas. Michael produced and handled re-recording mixing.

Film

STILL

Rakefet Abergel’s short horror film, produced by Michael J. Epstein and Sophia Cacciola, with cinematography by Sophia.

Film

Bloodhound

A chihuahua has a dark secret in this short vampire comedy directed and photographed by Sophia Cacciola, with editing and sound by Michael J. Epstein.

Music

The Motion Sick

Indie rock, touring, and recordings that helped launch Michael's music career.

Music

Darling Pet Munkee

Songs inspired by the unusual products once advertised in old comic books.

Music

Neutral Uke Hotel

Ukulele-led performances of Neutral Milk Hotel songs with Shawn Fogel and members of Golden Bloom and The Motion Sick.

Music

Space Balloons

Oddball songs about aliens, mustaches, and the absurd.

Music

Night Kisses

Original music and soundtracks for moving-image projects.

Music

M-sli©k da ninjA

Experimental collage recordings and radio work from the 1990s, collected on Aphorisms on Aphonia and Aphasia.

Screenplay

Apostles

In the days after Jesus’s crucifixion, the apostles are murdered in ways that foretell their eventual martyrdoms. As sightings of their risen teacher turn fear into religious certainty, the skeptical Thomas searches for a human explanation that could overturn everything the survivors believe.

Screenplay

Blood Sisters

After her adoptive parents die, a grieving Ohio woman flies to Los Angeles to meet the twin she never knew, stakes her in self-defense, and is welcomed home by a family of vampires who think she's her sister.

Screenplay

Bristle

After 211 days without brushing his teeth, a terrified man must pick up the toothbrush again when something black takes root beneath his gums, even though every stroke opens an impossible slit in the bathroom wall.

Screenplay

Candy

In 1960 Arizona, a genderfluid rockabilly courier hunts the bikers blamed for a car bomb that killed two local boys, but a new lover and increasingly unreliable radio messages turn the revenge spree into a deadly trap.

Screenplay

Chimera

In 1987, a grieving teenager experiments with lucid dreaming to reach his dead twin sister, but every attempt draws him into a more dangerous nightmare—and makes him question what lies on the other side.

Screenplay

Dance All Night, Die All Night

At a conservative Christian college in 1986, a sheltered freshman discovers that the summer's biggest pop song is conditioning listeners into perfect obedience, and when its charismatic singer prepares a nationwide broadcast, her lifelong inability to dance may be the one thing that can resist it.

Screenplay

May Their Memory Be a Blessing

After a devastating car crash, a compulsive fixer struggles to make sense of his family's week of shiva as strained relationships, missing memories, and impossible events undermine everything he believes about that night.

Screenplay

Tell Them

A grieving couple's new home appears haunted by a drowned child. When they bring in a skeptical paranormal investigator, the search for an explanation threatens to expose secrets they hoped to leave behind.

Screenplay

The Bat

When a caustic true-crime author moves into a jailed serial killer's desert house to write the definitive book, a copycat murder traps her among suspects, cops, and a crowd of costumed fans, and she has to solve it the only way she knows how: by reading people's words.

Screenplay

The Once and Future Smash

Two aging actors who each played the same forgotten slasher villain are court-ordered to tour the horror-convention circuit together, sharing one table, one sidekick and one shot at the role, while a court-appointed videographer records every humiliation.

Screenplay

The Unnaturals

When a deviance-hunting officer learns his sick son’s life-saving treatment makes him a criminal, he and a Ministry auditor begin questioning a regime that calls persecution compassion—and hides the truth about the ruler who created it.

Screenplay

Three Will Leave Alive

On the overnight drive to a high-stakes gig, a rising all-women rock band tunes into a long-dead DJ broadcasting tomorrow's disasters — including a report that only three of them will leave the stage alive. To change the future, the four friends must unravel the secret of a deadly fire that consumed the same venue thirty years earlier.

Screenplay

Blackthorne House

A guilt-ridden heiress enters a livestream horror competition under a false identity to discover what happened to her missing sister, only to find the show has been waiting for her and the house may be more dangerous than anything its producers staged.

Screenplay

The Mohel

When an elderly mohel is accused of a series of brutal nighttime attacks, his rabbi son must investigate the evidence as a viral true-crime podcast revives an ancient antisemitic blood libel.

Screenplay

Ghost Cars

A homicide detective facing a disciplinary hearing investigates the roadside death of an impound-yard clerk and follows a trail of impossible mileage, missing records, and police-held vehicles that seem to move when no one is watching.

Screenplay

The Mice Will Play

Over one increasingly disastrous night in 1994 Los Angeles, a burned-out contract worker and his maddeningly capable new partner race through five bizarre assignments while a group of armed strangers hunts them for reasons neither understands.

Screenplay

The Wedding Whirl

A camera-hungry bride who hasn't danced since a junior-high humiliation secretly joins a reality show that will pay for her wedding — if she can learn a surprise dance, hide it from her family, and outlast the childhood nemesis who blackmails her way into the bridal party.

Screenplay

The Caul

In a 1970s Italian cliffside village, a mother struggles to protect her silent, caul-born daughter as a blight spreads, a blood moon approaches, and the neighbors offering help seem to want something in return.

Book

End Zone 2: The Official Novelization

Written by Michael J. Epstein · The official novelization of the retro slasher End Zone 2, with an explosive new ending. Presented as a rediscovered genre artifact from the fictional world of the films.

Book

Bigfoot Does Not Exist!

Michael J. Epstein and Elana Reiser · An accessible introduction to statistics, science, logic, and evaluating extraordinary claims.

Book

How to Talk to People with Hearing Loss

Mary Florentine, Julia B. Florentine, and Michael J. Epstein · A practical guide to more effective communication with people experiencing hearing loss.

Book

Dystopian Express

A multi-author dystopian anthology including Michael J. Epstein’s story “The Unnaturals.”