The production still released with Bloodhound already tells you most of what its makers want you to feel. A man sits behind a windshield at night, half his face swallowed by shadow, while red and blue police lights smear across the glass and a casino sign, RESORTS in tall coral letters, burns out of focus over his shoulder. It is Atlantic City as the postcards never paint it: not the jackpot but the hangover, the light that keeps flashing after everyone has gone home. E.B. Hughes shot his new mystery thriller in and around that city, and the frame suggests he knew exactly what the place lends a crime story for free.

Bloodhound, which Hughes wrote, directed and produced, has now had its world premiere at the SOHO International Film Festival in New York. Its engine is one of the genre’s oldest and most durable: a former big-city detective, banished to a quiet town, takes on a brutal murder case that begins to pull apart both the truth and his own grip on sanity. Stelio Savante plays the detective.

Around him Hughes has assembled a cast with a genre memory. The Cape Town-born Savante arrives with Sarah’s Oil and Fresh Kills among his recent credits. Hannah Fierman is a face horror audiences know from V/H/S and Bunker Heights; Corin Nemec brings Place of Bones and Drop Zone; Deborah Twiss, of Kick-Ass and Bare Knuckle Brawler, and Randy McDowell, of I Can Only Imagine 2 and 40 Dates and Forty Nights, complete the ensemble.

The Atlantic City Boardwalk at night with casino signs lit up — Atlantic City Boardwalk at night. Photo: Lisa Andres, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

For Hughes, a South Jersey native, the shoreline is home ground rather than backdrop. Bloodhound is his fourth independent feature as writer, producer and director, after Turnabout (2016), Exit 0 (2019) and The Long Way Back (2021), each of which found a commercial distribution run, a modest but real achievement in a market where most self-made features never leave the festival circuit.

He produces alongside Robert Koob and the English filmmaker Paul Chart, whose debut feature, American Perfekt, starred Robert Forster and Amanda Plummer, was produced by Irvin Kershner and was selected for the Un Certain Regard section at Cannes. Salvatore Tumolo co-produces, and Michael Pagnotta and Clementine Bentley are executive producers.

The premiere screening took place on Friday, October 9, at Regal Union Square Theater 12, as part of the 17th SOHO International Film Festival, which runs from October 7 to 13, 2026, and champions independent filmmakers from around the world. This year’s edition is headlined by Jackrabbit, Gangland and Jesus Land, with Lou Diamond Phillips, Juliette Lewis and Harvey Keitel among their stars. No distributor or release date for Bloodhound has been announced yet.

Until one is, the film exists for most of us as that single production still: a man at the wheel, a windshield, and a casino’s name glowing like a warning he has decided not to read.

Tags: Stelio Savante, Corin Nemec, Atlantic City, Bloodhound, Deborah Twiss, E.B. Hughes