Every year during Halloweentime, a film festival called Shriekfest LA spends a weekend showcasing independent genre productions, both short-form and features. I was fortunate to win a screenplay award there last year, and I volunteered for the festival this past weekend, and it still rocks. As a huge fan of short horror films, I love that section of the weekend, and pretty much all of the shorts I saw this year kicked ass.
Seriously. I can't remember a bad one in the bunch.
Having said that, I wanted to focus on a few of the shorts - in alphabetical order - that left the most lasting impression on my posterior.
Quiet and disquieting, roaming and precise, "The Dark" opens with a demon-woman who's wandered into what looks like the world of
The Road. She meets a blind boy who can't see her needle teeth and black eyes. Can they be friends? Here's a fantastic mood piece, all greys and browns and long shots that emphasize the desolation around the "heroes." They're a sad pair, united by tragedy either received or inflicted.
"Eaglewalk"
A slasher film jam-packed into the short-form, "Eaglewalk" dances the familiar steps of the slasher tango, but its missing-link villain gives it bonus interest, as does the story surrounding the hero, who encountered Bigfoot as a child and must confront his fears again as an adult. The photography offers deep compositions of lush forests and imposing hallways, and the suspense scenes actually suspend. Someone turn this into a series!
"Incident on Highway 73"
If I had a favorite from the festival, it'd be "Incident," which piles on its mystery with such confidence that getting an answer would be anticlimactic. Instead, wisely, writer Michael Kirk and director Brian Thompson offer a few hints and leave it at that. This is all about the forceful winds, the imposing storm clouds, the pregnant pauses between dialogue. This is a great short, confident and creepy to the end.
"Killer Kart"
At long last, somebody's made a horror film about a killer shopping cart, and it was everything I dreamed it could be. The committed performances from Christine Rodriguez and Ray Bouchard, who (mostly) refuse to wink for the camera, make the humor all the more absurd, and the slasher theatrics set in the grocery store's aisles actually kinda work, which - again - amps up the silliness. "Killer Kart" is a bloody hoot.
"Maid of Horror"
Although the title should tip you off, "Maid of Horror" unveils its plot piece by piece, carefully setting up Stacie Mason's transition from supportive friend to delusional usurper. The big bit of fun here is watching the story switch between moments of genuine tension and curt, clever punchlines (a hard cut at the end brought the house down at my screening), which nicely matches the heroine's alternating lunacy and cheer.
"Meeting"
If serial killers had a twelve-step program, it'd look like "Meeting," a grim and funny short from writer/director Karen Lam. Four serial killers sit in a basement and offer each other motivation for staving off homicidal cravings, but a late entrant changes the dynamic. The Fincher-derived basement atmosphere is oppressive, and the ending, if predictable, makes for a satisfying reversal on the misogyny of movie killers.
"Mr. Spontaneous"
"Mr. Spontaneous" threw me for a loop. The animated prologue (setting up a loser's mundane 9-to-5 lifestyle) wouldn't feel out of place on Adult Swim, but the sudden jump to a live-action depiction of that loser's homicidal self-discovery is wholly perverse. But in a good way. In that garish, off-kilter way of films like
Hobo With a Shotgun and
Feast, where the frantic pace is laced with a pitch-black whimsy.
"Nighty Night"
"Nighty Night" effortlessly hearkens to everyone's childhood, when there was something Unknown and Terrible in the closet, or the attic, or the basement. The "monster" of "Night Night" is a really long arm (reminding me of Stephen King's "The Moving Finger") that threatens child and mother. The heartwarming ending is so good you forget that someone was viciously bludgeoned with an iron.
"One Last Kiss"
"One Last Kiss" is a heartfelt depiction of a husband and wife whose romance is cut short by zombies. Director Anthony Mezza boldly plays the story for maximum sadness; a guitar slow-jam plays during a scene of brain-eating. This results in some jarring (and very funny) moments of camp, with gives "One Last Kiss" an oddball variability that could've misfired but proves endearing, especially when the end credits roll.
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