
Directing
Dean Puckett
Dean Puckett is an English filmmaker and director working primarily in horror and genre cinema. His work focuses on atmosphere-driven storytelling, often drawing on elements of folk horror and the uncanny. He has directed a number of acclaimed short films, including The Sermon (2017), which screened internationally and received strong recognition on the festival circuit. His short-form work has played at major festivals such as Sitges, FrightFest, Overlook, Palm Springs ShortFest, HollyShorts, and Encounters, helping establish him as a distinctive voice in contemporary British horror. In 2024, Dean made his feature debut with The Severed Sun, a folk horror feature developed with backing from BFI, BBC Film, and Creative England. Following its premiere at Fantastic Fest, the film was released by Dark Sky Films, with Blue Finch handling UK, Ireland, and ANZ distribution, received a limited UK cinema run, and launches on Shudder in January 2026. Alongside his directing work, Dean is a co-founder of the production company Grasp The Nettle, which he founded with award-winning producer Rebecca Wolff. The company develops and produces work across both documentary and fiction, with a focus on distinctive, filmmaker-led projects.
Acting credits
NRA hermit’s decaying refuge on the edge of civilisation is shattered by his estranged son’s arrival.
Hermit
2026
9.0Water, woods, rock, and drifted stream. Storms overhead, fields of salt water, wicked moor. Lightning strokes and standing stones, ground hard as iron and oak, granite swallowing tin and slate. This documentary special feature examines Hammer Films use of Cornwall as a setting and location for its films, exploring the "new weird Britain" of contemporary Cornish folk horror with filmmakers, playwrights, and historians, and drawing on creative work from the region.
The Land Demands Blood: Hammer Horror and the Legacy of Cornish Gothic
2026
6.0In December of 2004, the bodies of a young couple were found in the middle of Dartmoor, a vast moorland that sits in the south western corner of the United Kingdom. The following film is made up of footage which was recovered eighteen years later.
The Devil's Footprints
2024
Behind the camera
5.0Circles is a comedy/sci-fi/horror which follows a pair of parnormal investigators as they discover a string of crop circles around their small town of Totnes, Devon.
Circles
2016
4.4A young woman’s secret rocks an isolated church community.
The Sermon
2018
4.4A young woman’s secret rocks an isolated church community.
The Sermon
2018
NRJack, Luke and Saul are The AutistiX, the UK’s premier autistic rock group. The boys are a tight-knit friendship group, expressing themselves through rock and roll in a way that they struggle to off the stage. Can they impress the crowds as they go on tour for the first time, and build up to their biggest gig so far, Autism’s Got Talent?
The AutistiX
2015
3.0A recovering drug addict is about to have a very strange night on The English Riviera.
Seagull
2022
6.1Magpie lives in an isolated church community ruled over by her father, The Pastor. When a man is murdered, paranoia sets in and people start to whisper about a strange 'Beast' that lives in the forest.
The Severed Sun
2025
6.1Magpie lives in an isolated church community ruled over by her father, The Pastor. When a man is murdered, paranoia sets in and people start to whisper about a strange 'Beast' that lives in the forest.
The Severed Sun
2025
7.4The Crisis Civilization is a documentary feature film investigating how global crises like ecological disaster, financial meltdown, dwindling oil reserves, terrorism and food shortages are converging symptoms of a single, failed global system. Proving that 'another world' is not merely possible, but on its way.
The Crisis of Civilization
2011
NRA single mother and her child are put through a nightmarish ordeal when a politician knocks on their door.
FUCK FACE
2026
NRA single mother and her child are put through a nightmarish ordeal when a politician knocks on their door.
FUCK FACE
2026
NRA single mother and her child are put through a nightmarish ordeal when a politician knocks on their door.
FUCK FACE
2026
6.0In December of 2004, the bodies of a young couple were found in the middle of Dartmoor, a vast moorland that sits in the south western corner of the United Kingdom. The following film is made up of footage which was recovered eighteen years later.
The Devil's Footprints
2024
6.0In December of 2004, the bodies of a young couple were found in the middle of Dartmoor, a vast moorland that sits in the south western corner of the United Kingdom. The following film is made up of footage which was recovered eighteen years later.
The Devil's Footprints
2024
6.0In December of 2004, the bodies of a young couple were found in the middle of Dartmoor, a vast moorland that sits in the south western corner of the United Kingdom. The following film is made up of footage which was recovered eighteen years later.
The Devil's Footprints
2024
NRHoney at the Top is a film about the Sengwer forest people of the Cherangani Hills, Kenya, being evicted from their ancestral land in the name of conservation. The film centres around father of two Elias as he works with his community to try and hold onto their culture and resist the evictions. It is an intimate portrait of this community at a crossroads, facing international pressure from organisations like the World Bank, a corrupt Kenya Forest Service who are burning their houses and attempts to turn the forest into a commodity through carbon offsetting schemes.
Honey at the Top
2015
NRGrasp the Nettle follows the exploits of a ragtag band of land rights activists in London as they struggle against corporations, government, police - and themselves - in their efforts to create alternative communities outside the framework of consumer society. When an eco-village pops up on a piece of disused land in West London , film-maker Dean Puckett (The Crisis of Civilization) gives up everything - his flat, job and normal life - to live among its eclectic inhabitants in an effort to understand what makes them tick.
Grasp the Nettle
2013
NRGrasp the Nettle follows the exploits of a ragtag band of land rights activists in London as they struggle against corporations, government, police - and themselves - in their efforts to create alternative communities outside the framework of consumer society. When an eco-village pops up on a piece of disused land in West London , film-maker Dean Puckett (The Crisis of Civilization) gives up everything - his flat, job and normal life - to live among its eclectic inhabitants in an effort to understand what makes them tick.
Grasp the Nettle
2013
2.1A camping trip seems like the perfect way for a group of friends to spend a vacation they will never forget. Unfortunately, no one will be left alive to remember the trip! Something lurks in these barren woods, something more insane than a chainsaw-wielding psycho, something more brutal than machete swinging mama's boy and more savage than a tribe of flesh-eating cannibals. There's a LOONY loose!
Loony in the Woods
2006
8.0Made for straight 8's 2018 competition on one cartridge of super 8mm film with only in-camera edits and no post-production. Premiered on may 14th 2018 at straight 8's Cannes film festival screening.
Satan's Bite
2018
8.0Made for straight 8's 2018 competition on one cartridge of super 8mm film with only in-camera edits and no post-production. Premiered on may 14th 2018 at straight 8's Cannes film festival screening.
Satan's Bite
2018