In Theaters and Digital

Manor of Darkness kicks off like the world’s most ill-advised group project: a fake documentary crew heading into a remote English manor to score an artifact they probably saw on Antiques Roadshow once. Things that start with bad ideas rarely end well, you know.

Laura, hanging on by emotional duct tape while caring for her dying mother, drags her estranged brother Chris and his plus-one chaos gremlin Lisa along for the ride.  Again, another bad idea.

Naturally, they break into a sealed chest—because why not open the one thing literally everyone in a horror movie should leave alone?—and surprise, they unleash something ancient, cranky, and very done with humans. From there, the manor stops being a house and becomes a full-blown mood: gloomy, oppressive, and dripping with “you’re not getting out of here” energy.

Once the time loop fires up, the film really leans into its nightmare logic. Each reset makes the day a little more off-kilter, like reality glitching on bad Wi-Fi. Shadow figures creep closer, and Lucas—the reclusive owner—starts unraveling.

Meanwhile, Laura is stuck remembering everything while her companions reboot like old laptops. It gives the movie a surprisingly human center: watching her drag the weight of each failure into the next loop while everyone else blithely stumbles back into danger. The horror isn’t just the supernatural stuff—it’s the cosmic exhaustion of being the only one who knows the test answers and still can’t pass.

The cast gives this looping panic some real teeth, though. Manor of Darkness stars Sarah Alexandra Marks (Escape), Kim Lysette Spearman, (As I Am), Louis James (River of Blood), Blake Ridder & Stuart Wolfe Murray (Makeup).  Marks as Laura grounds the movie with a raw, lived-in performance—equal parts determined, furious, and heartbreakingly tired. Even the side characters feel dialed in, adding the right textures of paranoia and dread. It’s a small ensemble, but they sell the repetition, the fractures, and the rising sense that they’re performing the same doomed play for an audience they can’t see.

Director Blake Ridder’s fingerprints are all over the film’s escalating unease. He doesn’t rely on cheap jumps; he leans into repetition as psychological warfare. Each loop shifts just enough to keep you on edge, like you’re spotting differences in a picture you swear you’ve seen before, even as the movie doubles back on itself, poking at the anxieties, ambitions, and egos behind both filmmaking and storytelling.

Manor of Darkness ends up being more than a haunted-house yarn or a sci-fi loop thriller. It’s a dread-soaked, cleverly structured descent into the stories we tell, the people we pretend to be, and the darkness that waits when the loop finally breaks.

Ridder Films, produced in association with Lucas A. Ferrara is delighted to confirm that the time-loop horror Manor Of Darkness will be coming to digital platforms in the US from December 9.

MPAA Rating: unrated.
Runtime: 82 mins
Director: Blake Ridder
Writer: Blake Ridder
Cast: Mirella Camillo; Stacey Edward Harris; Louis James
Genre: Horror
Tagline:
Memorable Movie Quote: "Wanna make some real money?"
Distributor: Ridder Films
Official Site:
Release Date: December 9, 2025
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
Synopsis: A group of pretend filmmakers are stuck in a never-ending nightmare at the manor.