Akiva Goldsman’s horror-thriller ‘Stephanie’ to premiere at Overlook Film Festival

The Timberline Lodge in Mt. Hood National Forest, Oregon is best known for playing the exterior of the Overlook Hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s cinematic masterpiece The Shining. This month it opens its doors to celebrate cinema, with the Overlook Film Festival taking place behind those creepy doors. Gee, we wonder how they came up with the name.

It’s shaping up to be an exciting festival, the organizers having already curated a program of 39 films, including 22 features and 17 shorts from a total of 16 countries. Now they’ve secured a whopper in the form of upcoming horror-thriller Stephanie.

Directed by Akiva Goldsman, Stephanie was written by Ben Collins and Luke Piotrowski, who previously collaborated on SiREN and Super Dark Times. It’s said to be set in the near future, as a young girl is left alone in her remote home, whilst a dark supernatural force looms in the background.

Plot and Cast Details

Stephanie left alone after parents abandon her amid global crisis; supernatural force stalks the home. Starring Frank Grillo (Blumhouse’s The Purge franchise), Anna Torv (Fringe) and Shree Crooks (American Horror Story), Stephanie marks Goldman's second partnership with Blumhouse after having served as executive producer on the Paranormal Activity franchise. Goldsman is best known for his work on I, Robot, The Da Vinci Code, A Beautiful Mind, and Winter’s Tale starring Colin Farrell and Jessica Brown Findlay, which he directed and adapted from the novel by Mark Helprin.

Festival Events and Award

“We couldn’t be more pleased to have Stephanie as the opening night film on this first year of the festival,” said festival co-director Michael Lerman. “With this film, Akiva Goldsman has crafted a horror-thriller that’s going to take audiences to unexpected places. We’re proud to be its site of premiere.” World premiere April 27, 2017; Goldsman and Blum participated in post-screening Q&A. Following the world-first premiere of Stephanie at the Overlook Film Festival, Goldsman and Jason Blum will participate in a Q&A session before screening their favourite Paranormal Activity film to attendees. Blumhouse Productions will also be awarded the Visionary Award during a ceremony for their continued work and effort to support directors like Goldsman on “unique, micro-budget genre films.” The festival organizers said the award was established to “honor a contemporary horror figure or company elevating the genre, while fostering the community by providing opportunities for new talent to thrive.”

Release and Distribution

Released on VOD April 17, 2018, by Universal Pictures; DVD followed May 1, 2018. No theatrical release occurred despite Blumhouse involvement. The runtime clocks in at roughly eighty-six minutes, a tight package that moves the story from Timberline Lodge buzz straight into living rooms without the usual awards-season circuit stops or Cannes whispers.

Reception and Legacy

Described as a solid creepy-kid movie with some script and pacing criticisms. Recut for 2018 home video release to remove sci-fi bookends present in festival version. Early festival write-ups noted the minimalist approach and the way the story leans on atmosphere rather than exposition, though a few reviewers flagged moments where momentum stalls. The home edition trims those outer sci-fi brackets, leaving the core domestic dread intact and giving the piece a cleaner, more contained feel.

Akiva Goldsman's Subsequent Career

Producer on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022–2025). Developing reimagined Irwin Allen sci-fi series (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Land of the Giants, The Time Tunnel) for Legendary Television (2025 announcement). Goldsman keeps moving between prestige studio projects and smaller genre experiments, the same balancing act that brought him to Stephanie in the first place. The pattern suggests he still enjoys the back tables at Sunset Tower where deals get sketched on napkins between bigger commitments.

Overlook Film Festival Evolution

Festival returned in subsequent years with different opening films and award recipients. The Timberline Lodge continues to host the event, drawing programmers who keep the horror calendar lively and give emerging voices room to test new material in front of crowds that still talk about that first-year opener. Each edition tweaks the mix while holding onto the venue’s built-in sense of place.

The festival circuit gave Stephanie its first audience and a clear path to home viewers, while Goldsman’s later credits show the same appetite for both big-canvas sci-fi and intimate scares. Overlook itself keeps booking fresh titles, proving the Timberline Lodge can host more than one memorable chapter in genre programming.