Inside Nightmarish TV: The Atlanta Duo Building Vertical Horror for the Phone

The collection on TerrorBox has a studio behind it.

The Nightmarish TV collection on TerrorBox — Ouija, Slasher, Augmented, each four episodes — isn't a loose playlist. It's the work of a single studio, built around a single anthology, by two Atlanta filmmakers: Madison Hoover and Jaime Lucero Jr.

How Nightmarish Started

The pair first crossed paths on a music video for a weekly filmmaking collective called Kick the Ladder — Madison in the director's chair, Jaime behind the camera as director of photography. The collaboration clicked immediately. They followed it with a 30-minute horror short, The Mare, and in doing so found a shared obsession with horror and psychological thrillers. That short became the foundation for everything after: in the fall of 2024, they founded the studio Nightmarish and built it around the series of the same name.

The Format: Monthly Themes, Weekly Nightmares

Nightmarish is a vertical horror anthology engineered for the 9:16 frame — not a widescreen show cropped for mobile. Each month, Madison and Jaime pick a theme, write four scripts (each 90 seconds or less), and release them weekly. Producing since November 2024, they've turned that rhythm into a growing catalog of self-contained nightmares meant to be watched in order.

On TerrorBox, that anthology lives as the Nightmarish TV collection. The current themed installments — Ouija, Slasher, and Augmented — each run four episodes, one per week of their month.

Two Filmmakers, Two Skill Sets

Together they're a directing team. Individually they bring different muscles: Madison is an experienced actor and stunt performer; Jaime is a freelance cinematographer and an ICG 600 DIT. That combination — performance, stunts, lens, and pipeline — is part of why the anthology feels complete rather than improvised. Every episode is built for the phone from the first frame.

"Vertical horror only works when every frame is built for the phone in your hand — no wasted seconds, the scare landing before you can look away," said Madison Hoover. "We shot it that way from the first frame."

"Every episode is a complete story with a feature-length world behind it, so the series doubles as a proving ground for ideas that can scale," added Jaime Lucero Jr.

A Philosophy of Open Doors

Ask them what fuels the studio and they don't point to a single film — they point to how they work. The industry can feel gatekept and secretive; Nightmarish does the opposite, collaborating with emerging Atlanta talent at every skill level and keeping the set a place people actually want to be. Grow together from the ground up, and keep the process fun. It's a philosophy that shows up on screen: tight, generous, made-by-people-who-like-each-other horror.

Watch the Collection

Start with Slasher for the most immediate jolt, Ouija for slow supernatural dread, or Augmented for tech horror that turns the device in your hand against you. The full collection is here.

For more on why this format rewards discipline, read why vertical horror is the future of streaming — and if you're a filmmaker working this way, submit your project to TerrorBox.