Nightfall Pictures has wrapped principal photography on its latest film TRANSYLVANIA TAPES, a found footage horror movie filmed entirely on location in Romania.
TRANSYLVANIA TAPES follows Mara Enescu, a young woman in her 30s who travels from Los Angeles to her home country of Romania to discover the truth about her mother’s disappearance in Transylvania years ago. Together with a cameraman friend, Mara journeys from Bucharest to the birthplace of Dracula himself.
The film originally began twenty years ago, when producer and Nightfall Pictures co-owner Josephina Sykes (WITHIN THE WOODS) wrote a vampire script set in Romania. After reworking the project several times, Josephina and her partner at Nightfall, writer/director Brad Sykes (CAMP BLOOD, GOTH), decided to make the movie themselves on a smaller budget. Preproduction and casting on TRANSYLVANIA TAPES began in Fall 2024, with the filming taking place in Bucharest and the medieval town of Sighisoara over three weeks in April 2025.
TRANSYLVANIA TAPES was a dream project for the Sykes, veteran filmmakers whose credits include PLAGUERS, MUTATION and the HI-8 Trilogy. The pair first met on the set of PHANTOM TOWN, a Full Moon production made in Romania in 1997. For their new film, the Sykes called on some crew and actors whose careers also dated back to PHANTOM TOWN and earlier, like Ion Haiduc (SUBSPECIES 2, 3 and 4) and Gabriel Spahiu (HIGH TENSION, Netflix’s DJANGO). Mara, on the other hand, is played by a young Moldavian actress, Valeria Badiuc, who makes her film debut.
A unique and personal film that mixes the found footage and Eurohorror genres, TRANSYLVANIA TAPES is currently in postproduction with an eye toward festivals in late 2025 and early 2026.
