Winner of Best Short Film at the first edition of the Sinister Horror Film Festival in 2024, Keep Coming Back is a psychological descent wrapped in the soft glow of a community center and the weight of unresolved trauma. Directed, co-written, and headlined by Kyle Kouri, the film follows Paul, a reluctant newcomer to an alcohol recovery group, whose attempts to stay quiet slowly unravel in the face of haunting memories—and something far more visceral.

What begins as a familiar setting—six recovering addicts, coffee, cookies, and shared stories—shifts into something far darker. As Paul is forced to confront his relationship with alcohol—and the shadow of his father—the emotional stakes spiral into a space few recovery dramas dare to explore.

Kouri, a multi-hyphenate artist with an MFA in Fiction from Columbia University, brings a literary and cinematic sensitivity to the material. The short was developed through Slashtag Cinema, the company he co-founded with musicians and filmmakers Travis Bacon and Dylan Garrett Smith in 2022. While their earlier projects leaned into micro-horror content for social platforms, Keep Coming Back marked a significant turn—toward longer format storytelling and the international festival circuit.

Bacon, who also co-wrote and co-produced the short, composed its unsettling score—adding his experience from bands like Black Anvil and Contracult into a new horror context. What began as a casual suggestion to film “some kill scenes” evolved into a fully realized short with layered characters and a disturbing psychological core.

Kouri describes Paul not as a cinematic antihero, but as someone painfully ordinary: “the guy sitting around drinking IPAs, probably knows everything about Christopher Nolan movies… but never does anything with his life.” Keep Coming Back asks what happens when that man is put at the center of a story—and then pushed to his limit.

The result is a short film that lingers. One that earned its place at the top of Sinister 2024’s debut edition not with spectacle, but with dread, nuance, and a quiet scream beneath the surface.