The celebrity guests may be the names that get printed biggest on the poster, but the convention floor is also full of people making films, building effects, doing makeup and finding ways to get strange ideas onto a screen. That is how I ended up spending some time talking with John Theissen Jr. and Danielle Francis, who were sharing a space at the show.
Theissen is the kind of independent filmmaker for whom one job title is not especially useful. His recent feature, Ketchup on Waffles, lists him as writer, director, producer, composer, cinematographer and editor. He also appears in the film. Calling him multitalented almost undersells the amount of the production he carried himself.
And then there is that title.
Ketchup on Waffles sounds like it should be a food argument. The movie attached to it is considerably less innocent. The 81-minute dark comedy, crime and horror feature follows three masked attackers who descend on a college-town diner and turn a Friday night into an increasingly brutal ordeal for the people trapped inside.
Theissen's film premiered in Bellmore in 2024 and received a wider digital release in April 2026. Along the way, it picked up Best Crime/Thriller Feature Film at the Golden State Film Festival and Best of the Fest at the Dunwich Horror Festival.
What makes the project especially interesting in the context of NJ Horror Con is how much of it comes back to the do-it-yourself nature of independent genre filmmaking. These are not productions where every creative responsibility lives in a separate department with a hundred people behind it. Sometimes the person directing the movie is also writing it, shooting it, cutting it and composing the music. Theissen's credits on Ketchup on Waffles make that reality unusually visible.
Nearby was Danielle Francis, and the overlap between their work made the shared area feel less accidental the more I learned about it. Francis handled makeup on Ketchup on Waffles, while Theissen appears in Francis' own feature, Threefold. That kind of crossover is part of what makes independent film communities interesting: the same names keep reappearing in different roles, supporting one another's projects while developing their own voices.
Francis has a particularly broad set of tools herself. She is a New York-based hair and makeup artist whose work ranges from glamour to gore and special-effects makeup, with experience across film, television, music videos, commercials, photo shoots and runway work. At the same time, she is moving behind the camera as a writer and director.
Threefold is her feature-length comedy-horror story about Scarlette, a believer in karma whose night goes sideways after she catches her mortal enemy with her ex-boyfriend. A book of black magic enters the picture, and the promise of cosmic justice starts giving way to something much more direct. Revenge, as the film's premise suggests, can be a lot more tempting than forgiveness.
The film runs just over an hour, with Sophia Keil leading the cast as Scarlette and Theissen appearing as Pepto Bizhoe. It has already collected Best of the Fest honors at the Dunwich Horror Fest, and its next notable stop brings it back into the Long Island independent-film community.
Threefold is scheduled to screen at the 2026 New York Long Island Film Festival, which runs October 21 through October 25 at the Lindenhurst Moose Lodge and the South Shore Theatre Experience. The festival says this year's edition will show a record number of films after receiving a record number of submissions.
Threefold is part of the opening-night horror block at the Moose Lodge on Wednesday, October 21, scheduled from 6:30 to 8:45 p.m., with a Q&A following from 8:45 to 9:15 p.m.
That feels like an appropriate next stop for a film that came out of the same kind of creative network I stumbled into at Horror Con. Theissen has his own history with NYLIFF, and Francis is now bringing Threefold into that festival environment with a cast and crew that overlaps with the people working around her. It is less a straight line from one project to the next than a web of people repeatedly creating together.
That may have been the most useful thing about finding the two of them sharing a space. It was not simply a chance to learn about Ketchup on Waffles and Threefold. It was a chance to see what independent filmmaking actually looks like when you strip away the idea that movies arrive fully formed from somewhere else. Sometimes it looks like a director composing his own score.
Sometimes it looks like a makeup artist directing her own feature. Sometimes the person doing makeup on your movie becomes the filmmaker whose movie you act in next.
And sometimes the story at a horror convention is not the famous person with the longest line. It is the two people sharing the space, quietly making the next thing.
SOURCE NOTES
• IMDb — Ketchup on Waffles (2024)
• Herald Community Newspapers — Wantagh filmmaker premieres horror film 'Ketchup on Waffles'
• Moviefone — Ketchup on Waffles (digital and streaming release, April 28, 2026)
• Golden State Film Festival — 2025 Awards
• The Dunwich Horror Fest — FilmFreeway festival page (August 2026 winners: Best of the Fest, Threefold)
• Socinety — Danielle Francis (makeup credit, Ketchup on Waffles)
• Socinety — Threefold (2026): synopsis, cast and crew
• New York Long Island Film Festival (NYLIFF) — 2026 schedule (Block Four, Wednesday horror, Moose Lodge)
• NYLIFF — FilmFreeway festival page (October 21-25, 2026)
Conversation passages are based on the reporter's interview with John Theissen Jr. and Danielle Francis at the New Jersey Horror Con and Film Festival. Film credits, release, award and festival details attributed to the public pages cited in SOURCE NOTES. Festival schedules are subject to change; check organizers before travel.