When Indigo (Maye Harris), a sheltered teenager with congenital heart disease, meets and befriends Sarah (Ellie Adrean), a more rebellious teen about getting a heart transplant, she decides to break free of her New Age parents’ strict worry and start living as an actual teenager.

Director and co-writer (with Max Kaplow) Alessandra Lichtenfeld has put together a cute glimpse into teenage life while being smart enough to reference The Parent Trap. There’s plenty of emotion in the short run time of this film.

In the year 2038, a rise in authoritarianism — look, let’s just admit this is our future and move on. Isaac (Nathan Whitfield) is trying to keep his sister Taylor (Kenny Cumino) safe — they live on the outskirts of society — which means keeping her old handheld game sticked with batteries to keep her from going through a painful and loud panic attack.

Director and writer John Christian Otteson has created a tense short that’s about family in the face of a rough world, while also having a Game Boy Color that has held up way better than mine.

Directed and written by Allison Shrum, this film finds Beverly (Lindsey Akers) and Suzette (Sara De La Haya) deciding that because Roger (Taylor Novak) is the worst husband of all time, he has to go. And if that death happens to be in the middle of a decent meal, well, then so be it.

Shrum has a lot of credits in front of the camera and a few behind it in production, makeup and directing. Being this assured so soon in her career points to amazing things.

You can learn more at her official website.

The first short directed and written by Ashley Hammelman, who has worked in the makeup departments of films like Death Ranch, Better Safe Than Sorry, Veronica Skeletons in The Closet and the upcoming The Visitor, this film has some wild visuals and frightening moments to tell the story of a woman struggling with depression and fighting her own inner demon.

Hammelman has an interesting story. She grew up making stop motion films and working in a movie theater before going to college, working on reality shows and getting another degree in makeup arts. She’s currently working to earn her Masters in Marriage in Family Therapy and hopes to spread awareness about mental health and create an open dialogue for people who are having issues related to it. She now uses her passion for telling stories — and the inner battles of mental trauma — to make films just like this one.

When a successful wedding planner goes missing, the last site on his browser history: says Floaters Dot Com, words which people have been hearing whispered behind their ears, a website of extraordinary magnitude that destroys nearly everyone that visits.

Directed by Steve Girard, who co-wrote the script with Andrew Raab and John Albano, and featuring SNL star Bowen Yang, this movie brought me back to when everything had a free disk in it. If you get promised a trip somewhere, don’t take it. I’ve learned that much in my life, having survived the years of dial-up and floppies. Oh yeah — and Geocities sites, which this movie seems to really love.

You can learn more on the official site.

A woman (Laura Dromerick, Camp Blood 8: Revelations, The Haunting of La Llorona) goes through the moments of her bad day, which somehow involves wearing period blood like face paint, but you know, whatever it takes to get you through, especially the way this country is heading for anyone that isn’t a rich white religious male.

Director Megan Duffy — she was the mom in Meat Friend! — has been all over the place in her career, acting in movies like the remake of Maniac and Holidays, as well as directing, producing, casting, editing and cinematography. You can learn more about her on her official site.

When Billie (Marnie McKendry) — sorry, I mean children — microwaves raw hamburger meat, it needs no old top hat to come to life. Instead, Meat Friend (Steve Johanson, who co-wrote this with director Izzy Lee) is alive and real and wants to teach her some valuable life lessons rooted in hatred and violence, no matter what her mother (Megan Duffy) does.

“More beef! Less cheese!” goes the refrain and the faithful demand the reanimation of the meat homunculus.

This was an absolute blast of strange and exactly what I needed during the fest, something that started odd and didn’t let up.

Izzy Lee has also directed the Lovecraft film Innsmouth, the “For a Good Time, Call…” segment in Shevenge and several shorts like Consider the Titantic, Disco Graveyard and Memento Mori. You can learn more about this movie — the kind of magic that has a pile of sentient 80% lean ground beef do rails of coke — right here.

Directed and written by Ryan McGlade, Buddymovie has two old friends meeting up once again in the forest, discussing their past moments of being pals and then dealing with a large steel warehouse that’s full of demeaning wisecracks.

This is a quick one, but driven by some sharp dialogue more than the cinematography. Can a building have a crisis? Well, if corporations can have the same legal protection as people, sure. I guess anything is fair game these days.

Do you have trouble making friends? Then you might find something in this movie to learn from.

Once, we went to a Mystery Spot and after we walked toward the center of the room, it kept pushing us into the walls and I was young and trying to hold my mother’s hand and it made me cry. Then, we all got on a train and it went through a forest and animatronic dinosaurs appeared and the driver told us to reach under our chairs for guns to kill the rampaging lizards and I yelled and ran up and down the length of the train begging for people to stop and that we needed to study the dinosaurs and not kill them. This was not a dream.

Another story. I was obsessed with dinosaurs and planned on studying them, combining my love of stories of dragons like the Lamprey Worm with real zoology, but then nine-year-old me learned that they were all dead and I had to face mortality at a very young age which meant I laid in bed and contemplated eternity all night and screamed and cried so much I puked. This is also a true story.

The Blood of DInosaurs has Uncle Bobbo (Vincent Stalba) and his assistant Purity (Stella Creel) explain how we got the oil in our cars that choke the planet but first, rubber dinosaurs being bombarded by fireworks and if you think the movie gets boring from here, you’re so wrong.

Can The Beverly Hillbillies become ecstatic religion? Should kids have sex education? Would the children like to learn about body horror and giallo? Is there a show within a show within an interview and which reality is real and why are none of them and all of them both the answer? Did a woman just give birth to the Antichrist on a PBS kids show?

This is all a preview of Joe Badon’s full film The Wheel of Heaven and when I read that he was influenced by the Unarius Cult, my brain climbs out of my nose and dances around before I slowly strain to open my mouth and beg for it to come back inside where it’s wet and safe.

Badon co-wrote this film’s score and screenplay with Jason Kruppa and I honestly can’t wait to see what happens next. Also: this was the Christmas episode of Uncle Bobbo so I can only imagine that this was him being toned down.