The Ninth Annual FINAL FRAME Horror Short Film Competition is proud to present our 2024 judges.

A veritable whirlwind of talent, the competition judges for Final Frame represent the same tenacity, perseverance, ingenuity, and passion we see reflected in our finalists’ films. We can’t wait to have them preside over an evening of frights and freak-outs leading up to their selections for Grand Prize, Runner-Up, Best Writing in a Short Film, and more!

(in alphabetical order)

TANANARIVE DUE is an award-winning author who teaches Black Horror and Afrofuturism at UCLA.

A leading voice in Black speculative fiction for more than 20 years, Due has won an American Book Award, an NAACP Image Award, and a British Fantasy Award, and her writing has been included in best-of-the-year anthologies. Her books include The Reformatory (a New York Times Notable Book), The Wishing Pool and Other Stories, Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. She and her late mother, civil rights activist Patricia Stephens Due, co-authored Freedom in the Family: A Mother-Daughter Memoir of the Fight for Civil Rights.

She was an executive producer on Shudder’s groundbreaking documentary Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror. She and her husband/collaborator, Steven Barnes, wrote “A Small Town” for Season 2 of Jordan Peele’s “The Twilight Zone” on Paramount Plus, and two segments of Shudder’s anthology film Horror Noire.

Find Tananarive on Twitter/X and Instagram.

PHILIP FRACASSI is the author of the story collections Beneath a Pale Sky (a finalist for the Bram Stoker award) and Behold the Void (named “Best Collection of the Year” by This Is Horror). His novels include A Child Alone with Strangers, Gothic, and Boys in the Valley. His upcoming books include the story collection, No One is Safe and the novels Sarafina and The Third Rule of Time Travel. Philip’s stories have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, including Best Horror of the Year, Nightmare, Black Static, Southwest Review, Centipede Press, and Interzone.

As a screenwriter, his feature films have been distributed by Disney and Lifetime. He has several stories in development for film adaptation with major studios.

Philip lives in Los Angeles and is represented by Elizabeth Copps at Copps Literary Services. For more information, visit his website at www.pfracassi.com.

Find Philip on Twitter/X and Instagram.

JAMAL HODGE is a multi-award-winning filmmaker and writer whose films have been seen at Sundance, Cannes, Tribeca, Chelsea, and The Hip Hop Film Festival, among others. Jamal has been a segment director on the hit PBS doc-series Southern Storytellers (2023), and is the director of the upcoming series Madness & Writers The Untold Truth, Maybe? (2024). He is a Producer on the Animated feature film Pierre The Pigeon Hawk (starring Will.I.Am, Jennifer Hudson, Snoop Dog, and Whoopi Goldberg).

As a writer, Hodge is an active member of The HWA and The SFPA, being nominated for a 2021 & 2022 Rhysling Award. His work is featured in Qualia Nous 2, Chiral Mad 5, A Unioverse Anthology: Stories of The Reconvergence, and The Year’s Best African Speculative Fiction 2022. Jamal’s debut poetry collection, The Dark Between The Twilight, is out now.

Find Jamal on Instagram

One of A.V. Club’s 10 female filmmakers to hire, IZZY LEE is a director and author on the rise. Lee shadowed Adam Egypt Mortimer on the SpectreVision film Archenemy and is in post on her own feature, House of Ashes. Several of her short stories have found publication, including The Beginning in Dark Matter Ink’s Haunted Reels anthology, curated by David Lawson, Jr. Released on 2/13/24, I Can See Your Lies is her first book, also from Dark Matter Ink.

See what she’s up to at nihilnoctem.com. 

Find Izzy on Twitter/X and Instagram.

LISA MORTON is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, and prose writer whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening.” She is a six-time winner of the Bram Stoker Award®, the author of four novels and 200 short stories, and a world-class Halloween and paranormal expert.

Her recent releases include Calling the Spirits: A History of Seances and The Art of the Zombie Movie; she also hosts the popular weekly “Ghost Report” podcast. Lisa lives in Los Angeles and online at www.lisamorton.com

Find Lisa on Twitter/X and Instagram.

ROB SAVAGE initially gained attention at the age of 19 when he wrote, directed, produced, and edited the low-budget romantic drama film Strings (2012), he later became more widely known for his work in horror films and has since co-written and directed lockdown horror hit Host (2020), co-written and directed Dashcam (2021), and directed Stephen King adaptation The Boogeyman (2023).