Whatever side you’re on when it comes to the controversy between whether Mikey Smash or William Mouth played Smash Mouth in the sequel to Warren Q. Harolds’ 1965 slasher End Zone, you can say quite simply that they’re both better than Snead Crump when it comes to menacing Angela Smazmoth (Julie Kane). Now that there’s a restored version of this never-released to the public slasher, well, now we can all fight that same fight all over again.
And hey — whatever happened to that final half hour of this movie? Have you seen it? Did you check it out when it played with The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb and The Evil Eye?
Put together from six partial prints and a partial Italian internegative — that explains why the language changes — this is the film that didn’t just give birth to the American slasher, it also influenced movies like Let’s Scare Jessica to Death.
Shh…I like keeping up the premise that this is a lost movie, so don’t tell anyone that it works because it’s just as rough and ramshackle as those pre-78 slashers that we love so much like My Brother Has Bad Dreams and Scream Bloody Murder (which ironically nearly shared a title). I also think it’s kind of wild that in the same year we’ve had two double features based around slasher movies of the past based around football (this pairs with The Once and Future Smash; the other entry is The Third Saturday In Octoberand The Third Saturday In October V).
End Zone 2 was 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.
As they both attend the Mad Monster Party horror convention, they learn that a modern End Zone will be made and they can both audition. That movie will start one hour into End Zone2 before it retcons everything that happened after.
It’s pretty amazing that a This Is Spinal Tap documentary comedy could be made about slasher movies but that’s because we understand the genre’s conventions. And, well, conventions. If you’ve spent any time doing that awkward walk past near-empty stars of the past and the hangers-on who attempt to be important by being in their orbit, this movie will more than ring true.
Directors Sophia Cacciola and Michael J. Epstein, who also brought the world Blood of the Triblades, Magentic and Ten really know what they’re doing. This was a blast.
The Once and Future Smash was 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.
Livescreamers is the sequel to 2020’s Livescream and is about the Janus Gaming team. This diverse team of eight content creators and video game players are super popular online. As they play through the latest horror game together, they’re trapped in a surreal caste that goes after their darkest and most hidden secrets. The only way they can all get out alive is by putting their trust in one another, which is easier said than done.
With game design inspired by Resident Evil, Outlast, Until Dawn and Dead by Daylight that was created on the Unreal Engine, this movie goes beyond found footage to become a “screenlife” found footage slasher.
Directed, written and produced by Michelle Iannantuono, the Janus Gaming team is led by Mitch (Ryan LaPlante) and includes Jon (Christopher Trindade), Taylor (Coby C. Oram), Zelda (Anna Lin), Gwen (Sarah Callahan Black), Lucy (Neoma Sanchez), Dice (Maddox Julien Slide), Davey (Evan Michael Pearce) and Nemo (Michael Smallwood, Marcus from Halloween Kills), a gamer who is afraid of the audience who is constantly watching the team.
The movie gets into not only the toxicity in the gaming industry, but also in the communities that grow around it online. Yet for these players, they’re doing more than dealing with hurt feelings and ruined online experiences. Each injury their characters endure causes damage in the real world.
Livecreamers is interesting. I spend all day in a virtual office and I’m unsure that I wish to spend my free time in a similar setting, but I enjoyed the film.
Livescreamers was 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.
Poundcake is a slasher killer who hunts white cis men and quite literally pounds them to death. As we see the Greek chorus of podcasters comment throughout the film, no one really cares that white straight men are being killed, much less the fact that they’re chained around the throat and sexually assaulted. And then Poundcake moves on to those very same men as a target, but ones that are woke, and yet the lack of caring seems to continue.
You know how it seems like every comedian has a podcast? Well, it feels like almost every character in this movie has one, too.
Either you’re going to absolutely love Onur Tukel’s (That Cold Dead Look In Your Eyes) film or you’re going to hate almost every moment of its running time. At once, it asks you to be enraged about the bad deeds of white men of power while also tearing at every single other group, as if being equally offensive makes up for the offensive ideas like, oh, rape can be funny.
It’s also about Asian women being anti-black, woke white men becoming too weak, dudes who want to be gay but want to do it with their wives around so that it’s not as gay, bad standup and then the fact that we should all just try and get along.
The actual slasher part is just a small portion of the movie. The podcasts and reaction are the rest and some parts work — everyone wants to be connected to the killings, even if it’s by the smallest of ways — and others don’t, as you start to lose track of who all these people are and if they even matter because, after some time, they don’t.
This is one of those movies that people will get upset and say, “You just don’t get it.”
Well, I did, it wasn’t as smart as it thought it was and where it could have really been incendiary, it came off as a prankster child so smugly sure of its own success that you don’t want to agree with any of it.
Poundcake was 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.
As a child, Wakaba (Sayu Kubota) had to deal with a bully of a father and even more negative treatment in school. Perhaps that why she always protected Koki, a boy who was treated the worst of everyone by the bullies. That stopped, however, when two of the boys were found dead and Koki killed himself some years later.
Years later, Wakaba is all grown up and on the way to a vacation to the woods with some girls and a musician that she has always been a fan of, Kohei Shirasaki. Yet like a trip to a slasher camp, everyone that interacts with her is murdered by a killing machine with a mechanical mask. In fact, only she and one other person survive the attacks. As Kamiyama, a police officer who was also the father of a girl who was killed, investigates, people close to Wakaba continue to get murdered in horrific ways. Has Koki never gone away?
Until now, I had only seen short films from Kenichi Ugana like Vierailijatand Extraneous Matter Complete Edition. This is even stranger than those films, if that’s even possible, because it’s somehow a sweet romance, a hilarious bit of comedy and a slasher, sometimes all at the very same time. It also feels odder and way more transgressive than the feeble stabs at strange that people rave over in Western elevated horror. This is no navel gazing but instead somewhat inspired levels of sustained weirdness.
Love Will Tear Us Apart was 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.
Pheobe (Kansas Bowling) is cast in an aerobics video but she’s unhappy with how everyone is acting. Isn’t this a serious workout video? Then why is everyone acting so sexy on camera, like Candy (Jessica Flux), Nikki (Adriana Uchishiba), Monique (Victoria Dementieva) and Cassandra (Krystal Shay)? Oh Pheobe, don’t you realize you’re in a movie that started with a shower scene and a murder?
The whole video is the brainchild of Dominica Stromboli (Ginger Lynn!) and her husband Frankie (Josh Parks), who are making the video to find something to keep their daughter Isabella (Nina Lanee Kent) out of trouble. But when Candy pushes Phoebe too far, heads — and all manner of other body parts — are going to roll.
Murdercise might not replace Killer Workout and Death Spa in your rotation of 80s workout slashers but if it was made in 1986, it would have definitely played USA Up All Night. That’s a compliment. But this is an indie movie on a small budget, albeit one made by people obviously having a blast making it. That said, if you watched late night cable horror or rented every slasher that came out on the mid 80s, well, you’ll love every wacky minute of this.
Murdercise was 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.
Here’s the next set of shorts that I watched at GenreBlast Film Festival.
Red Velvet: When Jack (Austin Lynn Hall) learns that the end of the world is on its way, he’s in the middle of getting an escort from the For A Good Time escort agency. She’s on her way and as she knocks at the door, he isn’t sure that he wants to invite in someone with all the warnings on the TV and radio. Except that Cassandra (Alisha Erozer) is pretty much a dream girl and she’s just begging to come inside. As she heads to the shower to clean herself up, he’s shocked when there’s another knock on the door and Cassandra is waiting outside.
Directed and written by Blake Simon, this looks incredible and moves so quickly that I wanted more. Great effects, well-shot visuals and even the colors look gorgeous. I’d love to see how he keeps this quality together for a full length film.
Jess Is a Clown Now: You know how there’s often a shocking reveal at the end of a slasher that explains it all to you? Director and writer Rylan Rafferty has put together an entire short filled with with those reveals that go on and on until they build into absolute baffling insanity.
Jess (Kara Jobe) has become a clown, as the title reveals. Mom (Lizabet Latvala) and dad (Randy R. Roberts) are already dead and Megan the gardener (Brianna Ripley) who may or may not be the half-sister or ex-girlfriend or not even connected to Jess may or may not be responsible. Stick with it, because this will take you to plenty of places and beyond.
This is a really fun short and I’d love to see if there’s anything else to this story.
The Haunted Baby Carriage from Hell: Spencer (Dylan Wayne Lawrence) and Cameron (John Reddy) have just moved into a new house- Kelli Maroney is their real estate agent Regina Kobritz, who is named for Mrs. Kobritz in The Fog — and discover that they are haunted by an old baby carriage. You know, if there’s one thing scarier than those wicker old wheelchairs like in The Changeling, it’s an antique baby carriage.
The bigger problem? Everyone thinks that they are finally announcing that they are adopting a baby, which doesn’t help, because that carriage shows up at the worst possible times. Director and writer J.T. Seaton has created something really great here, starting with a solid idea and infusing so many of the things that we all love from horror into a short that just plain works.
The Universe and You: Dr. Terry Hathaway (Cameron Dye, who has a ton of acting credits, including The Last Starfighter, Out of the Dark and a lot of episodic TV) has a cable access show sometime in the 1980s. Most of the callers want to ask him how to get ESP or to say Uranus on TV, but one caller claims that he’s been on the show over and over again and only Hathaway can understand that they are after him because only the two of them know a horrible secret. You can hear that there’s something alien on the other side of the line and it’s hunting the caller.
Director and writer Brendan Mitchell has created something that could be cliche here and instead made it into something that’s wonderful. It has a really well-shot look and goes from comedy to horror effortlessly.
Butt Stuff: I always wondered about those guys who buy those sex doll torsos. the ones that cut a woman’s body off and just make the sex areas. Like, well, the butt.
The hero of this movie is one of those guys. And the butt sex toy he bought isn’t just a piece of foam or rubber, it’s actually a sentient and fully aware as well as being fully in love with him.
Yet once he’s found actual love, he keeps jamming the butt under the bed. Or throwing it in the garbage. And that won’t do. That butt is going to get some revenge.
I really liked director and writer April Yanko’s short. It didn’t need the bug at the end, as the scene of the butt attacking her former love was enough. Otherwise, this is really great with some really solid special effects.
Righteous: Director and writer Ethan Grossman has created a film that shows the nightmare of many children as their parents enjoy their empty nest perhaps a little too much and want to fill it a little bit. As a family gathers for Shabbat for the first time in a while, dinner doesn’t go as planned when mom and dad introduce a new “friend” to the family.
This is shot really well and feels more horrific than any monster that could show up in any other movie.
From Above: The second short that I’ve seen from Zachary Eglinton at GenreBlast, this black and white starts with audio from House On Haunted Hill before following a man outside into a dark and foggy night. As he holds a flashlight, the camera stays tight on his face before revealing a full moon. You know what that means — something is out there, something deadly.
From Above is quick but really a fun short, shot well and showing promise for what comes next.
Candor: Created by Timothy Troy, this is a quick film where a woman is reflecting with her date after they engage in a hot and steamy act. Stick with it, as it has a great reveal and the camera work is quite good for this under two-minute film. Paige Bourne, who plays Lena, is also quite good.
Fetch!: Jaime (Eduardo Saucedo) has warned his new dog sitter Brandy (Nicole Fancher): Logan should never lose his yellow ball. She feels like she can handle this job, because after all, her pet sitting company Fetch! has never had anything less than a five-star review.
Yet the first day back from the dog park, she finds the remains of some animal and is offer $50 and a guaranteed perfect review if she cleans it and Logan up. But when this happens again and again, as well as when she thinks back to what Jaime told her about where Logan got his name and his missing best friend, she wonders if she could be dealing with something more than just a dog.
No matter what he does in this movie, the actor playing Logan, Logan Bigtooth, is a good boy.
Play Dead: This movie is going to upset some people.
Robinson (Derek Martin) and Clementine (Yael Leberman) are on drugs and in the woods, looking for the final resting place of the man known as Elvis (Samuel Shurtleff). He’s left behind a videotape demanding that whoever finds him makes him famous by desecrating his corpse. Well, he gets exactly what he asks for.
There’s one moment when Clementine asks the more clean cut Robinson if she frightens him. I’ve been there, dude.
HIMS: Kids are frightening.
Krsy Fox directs, writes and stars in this film in which she plays a mother whose daughter Lulu (Elle Riot Fox) tells her that there’s a monster named HIMS that lives in her bed. A creature with long nails that just waits for people to go to sleep and sometimes, well, he’s bad.
Fox is the fiancee of Spider One, the lead singer of Powerman 5000 and director of Bury the Bride, which she also appeared in. This is really well made and I’d be up for seeing what she can when she makes a full-length movie. It really captures just how weird little ones are.
Foreign Planetary: On her last day on Earth before being forced to return to her planet of origin, a young woman must find a way to stay in her new home. Foreign Planetary, directed and written by Tiffany Lin, has some big ideas and major world building despite its short running time.
Angie (Chelsea Sik) can’t survive on Earth without a special device that regulates her emotions, something that makes her wonder if what she’s feeling is real or if it’s being created by the machine. What she does know is that she has to get her brother off their home planet and to do that. she has to stay on Earth by any means necessary.
There are no major science fiction blockbuster effects in this but what minor effects appear are so well-crafted that they feel authentic and true. This feels like enough of a story to last for an entire film and I’d love to see what could come of that.
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.
I don’t understand cryptocurrency, but perhaps this movie — which also reflects Gamergate — proves to me that it’s so frightening that maybe I’m better off this way. In an attempt to remove herself from the sexual harassment at her game development job in the city, coder Cara Hammond (Mikayla Iverson) has gone into the woods, so to speak, and found a new home in the rural California countryside.
There, she’s working as an aspiring cryptominer generating new coins in cryptocurrencies with an algorithm of her own invention, she discovers mysterious code embedded deep inside the mining data. Her discovery turns into an investigation for the truth, which quickly turns into a fight for her life. When you’ve spent this much time and energy burying a secret and have this much power, one lone person in the middle of nowhere is expendable, right?
Directed by James Fox, who co-wrote the script with Amy Kay DuBoff, this gets deep into Faraday cages that control voltage and machine code yet never goes above your head. Iverson is also often the only person on screen and is able to keep the story moving all by herself. An interesting movie that does way more than you’d expect from its budget, this will keep you thinking.
Crypto Shadows was 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.
Directed by Sean Oliver, who co-wrote Forever Home with Drew Leatham, this is the tale of Ryan (Leatham) and Jules (Sammie Lideen), a young couple who have moved across the country and somehow unwittingly spent all of their money on a new home. To top it all off, they soon learn that it’s haunted.
Before that, they’re surprised by Alice the realtor (Colleen Hartnett). They have to go through all the paperwork, which is always way too much and caused me flashbacks. Then they go around and introduce themselves to the neighbors. And then their first night alone in the house is interrupted by Max (Cody Hunt), who seemingly moves right in.
And soon enough, they learn they don’t just have one ghost in the house — Peggy (Shelly Boucher), who they thought was a neighbor! — but actually three ghosts if you count the kids, Esley and Gavin (Maddox and Xander Simmons). To try and get some peace, they hire a professional. They hire a medium named Megan Marjorie Markle IV (Alison Campbell) who ends up getting killed in the house and haunting Ryan, Jules and Max.
Maybe when a medium comes in and has packages to sell you, you should know that you’re in trouble.
That’s when they also learn that if you die in the house, you’re stuck there forever. And if they aren’t careful, they’re going to join him. Forever Home is an interesting film because it’s just as much about relationships and real life as it is the world of ghosts. The effects might not be the fanciest you’ve seen, but it’s definitely a movie with heart and soul.
Forever Home was 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.
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.
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.
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