With newly discovered footage from the ‘British Film Archive’, we follow an all women's ghost hunting society seeking to capture the ghoul they believe to be responsible for a series of murders in 1880s East London. Snapshot is brilliantly intimate and revealing with a particularly captivating performance from Cathy Wippell.
Tamworth, our seen and unheard videographer, wields his camera hoping to catch this literal or figurative devil on film. With the camera brought into the most intimate areas of our characters’ lives – homes, pubs, religious sites – I was oddly reminded of the modern day vlog-style content we are all acquainted with. We see from our characters a familiar range of behaviours you or I might exhibit when being recorded, even as our characters don't fully understand how the camera works. From indulgent theatrics and dramatisations of everyday acts to awkward performances under surveillance to intimate confessions, the camera might as well be a Canon G7X or a webcam. The camera oscillates between being invisible because of its novelty and being a character in its own right holding the secrets of its companions and interrogating their motivations.
Victorian-era films can often feel distant, presenting the period as something removed from our contemporary experience. However, Tamworth’s perspective allows us to enter this world from a more intimate vantage point – a thoroughly enjoyable if slightly contrived narrative choice. In doing so, the film also reflects our own morbid curiosity and sensationalist attitudes, allowing the audience to recognise aspects of our own fascination with the macabre within the seemingly distant world of Victorian London.
For me, the gothic genre works because it places the collective dynamics of women in stark contrast with the solitude that horror so often requires. There is something particularly unsettling about watching women navigate fear together and emphasise the importance of togetherness in an ultimately futile effort to protect themselves.
What interests me more than the ghost hunt itself is the self-perpetuating nature of women’s dehumanisation. Our ghost hunters themselves commit some arguably inhumane acts but how can someone who is denied humanity be expected to act with any? Eerie, unsettling and at times comical, this film is less concerned with whether this ghost is real than how society treats women it sees as not quite real.
SNAPSHOT world premiered at Edinburgh International Film Festival on 15 August 2026. It was the festival’s only horror film in Competition and was up for The Sean Connery Prize.
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