Here’s the next set of shorts that I watched at GenreBlast Film Festival.

Biters and Bleeders: Tad (Christopher Malcolm) and Penelope (Raven Angeline Whisnant) have fallen on hard times. At once he acts like a child and yet dominates her. When his mother (Joyce Wood) dies, he inherits the family home and thinks that it will solve all of their problems.

The problem becomes the house, filled with bedbugs that constantly bite and eat at her skin in the same way that her husband eats away at her psyche. The constant heat of the house beats her down, just as her husband’s abuse and odd behaviors make her start to unravel.

Director Charlie Carson Monroe, who co-wrote the script with Whisnant, this is an uncomfortable watch and I mean that in a good way. The film gets across just how trapped Penelope feels and just how strange her life has become. It felt oppressively hot, sticky and itchy; I felt like I had to check my skin repeatedly for bugs. This might be too much for some, but for those willing to take the ride, it’s a rewarding film.

The Wyrm of Bwlch Pen Barras: In this folk horror film shot in Rhuthun by debut director, writer and Rhuthun native Craig Williams, three men are called upon once again to carry out a terrible assignment in the quiet town of Rhuthun, North Wales.

Gwyn (Bryn Fôn), Emlyn (Morgan Hopkins) and Dai (Sean Carlsen) meet up and drive to the farm of Dafydd (Morgan Llewelyn-Jones), who they abduct against his will and throw in the trunk for the drive and hike up the hills of Bwlch Pen Barras. This has the feel of 70s British horror and while short, it delivers plenty of promise for what Williams and his crew, which includes cinematographer Sean Price Williams, have to offer in the future. There are some small moments in this that make it so deep and rich. And I loved the title card at the end, which places this even more in the look and feel of another decade.

You can learn more at the official site.

Nosepicker: Directed and written by Ian Mantgani, Nosepicker achieved the impossible and had moments that made me physically sick, even after all these years of watching the absolute roughest and grossest cinema possible. Well done!

Georgie Freeman (Leo Adoyeye) is a school kid who is different than everyone else and therefore shunned and bullied. His biology teacher Miss Poppy Barun (Abi Corbett). and mother (Bridgette Amofah) are both worried about him. As for Georgie, all he seems to care about is picking his nose and leaving the messy slime under his desk, a habit that gets him screamed at by all the little boys and girls.

You could see this as Georgie being neither black nor white and lost in a world that wants him to conform to whiteness. Or perhaps he’s compelled by the creature that he has created, a sickening mass of boogers and snot that comes to life while he sleeps and gets the horrible revenge that he can never achieve while awake. Either way, this is an uncomfortable yet great short.

Ride Baby Ride: Director and writer Sofie Somoroff has created a strange one here, as Celina Bernstein plays a mechanic who purchases the Camaro of her dreams from two creeps played by Anthony Richard Pagliaro and Sam H. Clauder II.

The problem? The car itself is a death trap and not because it’s a lemon. No, I mean that literally the car is out to kill her and in ways that are very painful and upsetting, even for the viewer. There are some moments of hand and fingertip violence that upset me as a writer greatly. The camera work, effects and sound design are all quite creative here, setting up just how trapped the mechanic is by a car that seemingly is alive.

I do love killer car movies, so I really loved that this one was horrifying without even leaving the garage.

PicMe: Alice (Arielle Beth Klein) is pressured into downloading a new social media app by a friend and she promises to herself that she won’t leave for lunch tomorrow unless she gets 5,000 likes. Soon, the app controls her every thought, causing her to start lying — it starts small with posed images, then has her ordering food and pretending she cooked it before every single thing she does is livestreamed — and then her body itself begins to warp and change based on people liking or trolling her. Will she ever catch up to Marie (Briana Sky Riley) who effortlessly looks gorgeous no matter what she’s doing? Or will it all be too much for her?

Director and writer Molly Tomecek has created a cute film here, filled with some fun effects and even some moments of animation as characters, emojis and chat windows interact with Alice. Klein does a great job of carrying nearly the entire short and has a gift for physical comedy.

High Stakes: Writer and director Zac Eglinton’s film is a quick and quirky tale of what happens when you don’t wait for the doctor to call you back and end up telling your friend that you have no interest in life as a vampire.

Eglinton must have a fear of allergy, as he already made 2019’s Allergic Overreaction, a movie in which cookies served at an annual Freddy vs. Jason fest cause the horror of, yes, an allergic reaction. His 2021 film Gastral Projection is about a supernatural stomach ache caused by a bad pizza. I’d be worried at this point if we ever went to dinner together.

Moonlight Sonata, With Scissors: Zee (Hailey Swartwout) is awoken by a loud bang and Corey (Troy Halverson) panicking outside her house. He has a dead body in the back of his truck, which ends up being her old parole officer Charles Grandy (Jeff Strand). He’s killed the man and now has no idea what to do with the body, but Zee wonders if this is all a dream. And when it is, she easily deals with it and then reads up on how to get even more out of lucid dreaming.

The next night, however, things are not what they seem when the dream comes back a second time.

Directed by Chris Ethridge (Haven’s End and a segment sponsor of Fat Fleshy Fingers), who co-wrote this with Darrell Z. Grizzle, this is a quick trip through dream logic. The script is quick and to the point but works so well that you won’t even notice how quick the time flies by.

The Heritage: Part of Hulu’s Bite-Sized Horrors, The Heritage shows what happens when Dylan (Matt McClure) meets his father (Bruce Jones) for the first time. Directed by Andrew Rutter, who co-wrote the script with Chris Butler, this has some of the grossest effects that I’ve seen in some time, as Dylan’s father is a gigantic creature that quite literally looks like a human-sized piece of feces.

Pimples will pop, bodies will sweat, vomit may rise up in your mouth as you watch this, but just as horrifying as the visage of the father is, the way that he has conducted himself throughout his life may be even worse. Dylan tries to stand up for himself and make an account of his life, but all father and his wife, servant, trall or all of the above wants is for son to gift dear old dad with just one little kiss.

By all means, do not eat while watching.

Shelter Half: I had no idea what a shelter half was. It’s A shelter-half is a partial tent designed to provide temporary shelter and concealment. It’s also the title of this short, in which a naturalist investigates the disappearance of a mother black bear while camping in a remote valley. Well, he sure does find something.

Directed by the Barber Brothers, written by and starring Nathaniel Barber and shot by Matthew Barber, this short film has a lot to say about the way man has treated nature and what they’ll deal with when a reckoning comes. Plus, it has some really great practical effects. This feels like the kind of idea that would lend itself quite well to a longer movie and I hope to see that happen.

Jeong-Dong (Affects): Directed by Choi Woo-gene, this is the tale of Yoo-bin, who is having a nervous breakdown after seeing something strange in his new home which is, for some reason, filled with objects from a cult religion that its last owner believed in. He tries to get his childhood friends So-dam and Ha-seung to help, but whatever is inside has unlocked the traumas and emotional wounds that they have all buried and no one is safe.

Each of these fears — an abusive smiling uncle in only his underwear, an overindulgent mother who seeks to feed her child until they are sick, a blood-spattered schoolgirl — must be faced but only one of the three will be able to emerge. I really loved the scene with the ghost mother hanging herself, as the rope appears literally out of nowhere and it’s quite shocking. Even with me telling you, you won’t be ready for it.

The Warmest Color Is Blue: Directed and written by Kevin Ralston, this is about two people coming together under adverse circumstances, seemingly a home invasion where a TV has been stolen. It has nothing to do with the Léa Seydoux and Adèle Exarchopoulos-starring romantic film La Vie d’Adèle – Chapitres 1 & 2, which is also known as Blue Is the Warmest Color.

Shan Fahey plays Rebecca and Ian Faria as Detective J.W. Bond, the man who tries to find the missing TV and perhaps finds her heart.

Sempre Avanti: Two U.S. soldiers — known as tunnel rats — plunge into a suspected enemy combatant tunnel system during the Vietnam War only to awaken unparalleled horrors. Like Shelter Half, this was directed by the Barber Brothers, written by Nathaniel Barber and shot by Matthew Barber. Both brothers appear in the story, unlike the above mentioned short.

This is appropriately claustrophobic and has a monster in it that looks like it was a lot like the one in Shelter Half, which if that’s true, props to these guys for extending their budget. It’s less a story than a framework to get said monster up against some soldiers, but it looks great and would probably make a great extended film.

The Watcher: Danielle is the last member (Sandrine Morin) of The Children of Enoch and awaits the resurrection of her recently departed sisters and their leader Father Enoch on the next day, the day that she believes that he will bring forth the Day of Judgment in his divinely resurrected body.

Directed by Nathan Sellers, this has a gorgeous look and a really ominous tone. According to the film’s Indiegogo, it was shot in 36 hours in Bakersfield, VT and was made by a skilled skeleton crew of six artists. The tone of Enoch’s voice (Rohit Dave) as he commands Danielle is so unsettling and this film sticks with you down to the last gorgeous post-credits shot. What a beautiful work of art.

That’s Our Time: Wow. Just wow. This movie floored me and I don’t want to give away the ending because it’s that great. It starts with Danny (Marque Richardson) finding that he’s unable to make a true connection with the people in his life. His therapist Dr. Miller (Debra Wilson, who is great in this and I didn’t even recognize her from Mad TV) attempts to show him that you must focus on the time you have left than the time you’ve already spent. But is it too late?

Directed by Alex Backes, who co-wrote it with Josh Callahan, this is a true surprise and perhaps the best short I’ve seen all year. I can’t wait to see what Backes does next.

These shorts were watched as part of The GenreBlast Film Festival which is from August 31 to September 3. All screenings for GenreBlast are held at the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema in Winchester, Virginia. Passes are on sale through The Alamo Drafthouse Winchester. Learn more at the official site.