A selection of awesome short film premieres for you to watch at home.
PROM PARTY MASSACRE (USA, 18 min 38 sec)
Director: Jordan Gustafson, Writer: Phil Tice. Cast: Ashley Campbell, Phil Tice, Theo Tiedemann, Tommaso Di Blasi, Jake Ellsworth, Julia Davo
In a genre-bending musical full of teenage rebels, poodle skirts, and betrayal, a young gay man tries to woo his crush with a swinging prom party – but when popular kids start turning up dead, the partygoers discover a slasher killer amongst the student body!
An all-singing, all-dancing, high-camp homage to 80s horror, riffing as much off John Hughes as Wes Craven, with a nod or two to Julie Brown, and a twist of John Waters’ waspishness just for spice, this plays like A ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW for the Slasher Movie generation, with pitch-perfect production design, punchy songs, snappy satire, stylish slashings, and a positive message amid all the mayhem.
THE KING IN YELLOW (USA, 17 min 07 sec) (International premiere)
Director: Sam Shapson. Cast: Michael Budd, Haley Baird, Alex Reynoso.
There’s a reason no one has studied the contents of the play – it’s notorious for driving readers insane. Three grad students come up with a plan to divide a copy into quarantined thirds, allowing them to safely perform groundbreaking research on the text. But the endeavour takes a sinister turn when it becomes clear that one of them has read more than just his share.
Robert W. Chambers’ seminal short story cycle is one of the founding texts of American Weird fiction; a formative influence on writers as diverse as Lovecraft and Thomas Ligotti, recently referenced throughout the first season of TRUE DETECTIVE. This chilling contemporary reimagining brings the infamous forbidden text of the title into the modern world in a tale of academic ambition, jealousy, and psychosis, and a terrifying reminder that sometimes there is nothing so dangerous, so toxic, as an idea.
STALKER (France, 20 min 14 sec) (UK Premiere)
Director: David Cholewa. Cast: Sandra Hohenadel
After a vicious assault at a party, a young woman flees the scene. And as she walks back home on a gloomy and threatening Paris night, she can’t shake the feeling that she’s being followed.
A narratively pared down tale of pursuit and paranoia, in which a sinister stalker takes on increasingly monstrous proportions, this makes masterful use of its nighttime Paris locations, an expert use of space and shadow, and some subtly VFX-heightened visuals to create an oppressive environment that is both nightmarishly stylised and all-too-concretely real, generating a suffocating sense of escalating dread that builds inexorably to an unsettlingly ambiguous resolution. You’ll never view the City of Lights in quite the same way again.
TILL DEATH DO US PART (USA, 24 min 28 sec) (UK Premiere)
Director: Jacob Hamblin. Cast: Dave Martinez, Jasen Wade, Monica Moore Smith, Maggie Scott
Desperate to marry the love of his life, an Undertaker’s apprentice digs up the grave of a mysteriously murdered bride in an attempt to rob her corpse of its ring.
A brilliantly realised exercise in old school American Gothic, with narrative nods to Washington Irving, and in particular Edgar Allen Poe, directed in a pitch-perfect retro-40s, Expressionist style that recalls the classic Universal Monster movies and the films of Val Lewton. Beautifully shot and lit, with suitably heightened, stylised performances, excellent production design, and an attention to detail that extends right to the final credits, this has the feel of a lost classic rediscovered.
HUNCH (Spain, 17 min 27 sec)
Directors: Marisa Crespo, Moisés Romera. Cast: Cristina Fernández Pintado, Àngel Fígols, Jordi Ballester, Maria Maroto
A tarot reader becomes obsessed with the feeling that a terrible misfortune is going to happen and she will do anything to prevent it.
A razor sharp repurposing of a classic horror trope – the alleged psychic whose powers suddenly prove all-too-real – this takes the idea to its darkest possible place, in a tense, terrifying, torn-from-the-headlines socio-political thriller, which moves from sharp, slyly amusing character study to engrossing mystery, to a final reveal that is genuinely nightmarish and horrible; all the more so for its basis in reality.
THE EVIL EYE (Andorra, Spain, 20 min 58 sec) (UK Premiere)
Director: Alfons Casal Hector Mas. Cast: Claudia Riera, Núria Florensa
Andorra, 16th century. Catherina is a healer with a bad reputation in town. Her sister Magdalena, with whom she hasn’t spoken for a long time, asks her for help to cure her son. A tragic turn of events leads Catherina to be tried for witchcraft.
A stark, grim tale of a Spanish Inquisition witch hunt, this viscerally powerful and visually stunning film combines classic folk horror with a subtle and nuanced study of family betrayal, jealousy, and social and religious hypocrisy, and a final message of hope and transcendence.
HEIRLOOMS (Canada, 12 min 44 sec)
Director: Dan Abramovici. Cast: Chloe Van Landschoot, Ryan Bruce
A young woman, sorting through her mother’s things, following her death by suicide, starts to realise that there is some malevolent force in the house with her…
An old school haunted house shocker, elegantly crafted, beautifully shot and played, making expert use of the location, of framing and shadows and sound and editing and focus and depth of field, keeping the viewer constantly on edge in a manner that John Carpenter would be proud of. And utterly chilling in its implications and aftershocks.
131 min total running time.
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