Get ready for another collection of shorts that I watched at Fantastic Fest.

The Blood of the Dinosaurs (2021): 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.

The Blue Hour (2022): Jeremías Segovia directed and wrote this short in which a young woman — La Chica (Lucia Blasco) — is on the beach, waiting for the crowd to leave so that she can bathe in the nude. She believes that it’s just her and the ocean and that’s when she realizes that a shadow known only as El Joven (Juan Diego Eirea) is watching. This begins a battle of wills between the two with her keeping her body inside the rapidly cooling azure waves while he never averts his gaze. Who has the longer endurance and patience?

Segovia also made the shorts La Mujer Ruta and The Tooth Fairy. This is an intriguing premise and a gorgeous looking short.

The Businessman (2022): Lola (Liviya Meyers) is on the way home from school when she meets a salesman (Steven Gamble) who looks to instill the fear of financial insecurity into her and convince her to sell ancient fashion magazines for him. Director and writer Nathan Ginter also made Last Seen and this has some great atmosphere and a genuinely strange feel throughout, feeling at once modern and out of time.

What if capitalism itself was the monster of a supernatural movie out to coerce teenagers to do its occult bidding? That’s this movie and it looks, feels and plays out so well.

Chicks (2022): Geena Marie Hernandez directed and wrote this tale of a “girly, cotton-candy colored slumber party” that transforms into an occult ritual when Polly (Nikole Davis) is invited to join the popular upper echelon of high school royalty for a sleepover. Yet Lizzie (Jena Brooks), Kelly (Maddie Moore) and Jazz (Lilliana Simms) have plans for her and honestly, I could see the witch elements rolling in but I had no idea where this was going, nor did I get the pun of the title until the end of the film. I’ll let you go in as blind as I was, but man, this looks great, like a pink candy nightmare and the end is wonderful. Well done.

The Community (2022): Milos Mitrovic and Eric Peterson also made Unidentified Objects, a great film that played Fantastic Fest. This is a 48 Hour Film Fest movie turned into a short that stars Adam Brooks (the director of Astron-6’s Father’s Day and The Editor, as well as Doctor Scorpius in Manborg and the dad in Psycho Goreman) as a man seeking something precious and using an informant (Mitrovic) to get it. It’s an absurd short that is quick and to the point, while being pretty enjoyable.

Cruise (2022): I worked in a survey research telemarketing place before I got into advertising and it’s the kind of job that still gives me nightmares. We had a set script that we had to follow, a mysterious room had people listening to us and you didn’t even get to call the number. It would just ring, you’d ask someone if they got their sample of laundry detergent, then they would call you an asshole for ten seconds, then you’d start all over again for ten hours at a time. Often, one of those mystery people would tell you that you were off script and take over and show you how. The worst was if you made a human connection at any point, they would terminate your call. I still wake up thinking that I’m late for my job there, a room of cubicles and no windows and people plugged into headsets as blood for the machine.

Cruise, directed and written by Samuel Rudykoff, finds telemarketer after telemarketer trying to sell a cruise and failure means death.

These days, when scam likely comes up on my phone, I don’t get mad or rude to the people on the other line. I was once them. It was not fun. And, as this movie will show you, you may end up getting them shot right in the head.

Deerwoods Deathtrap (2022): Shot on Super 8, this tells the story of Jack and Betty Gannon, who were on a trip to Cape May, New Jersey in 1971 when they somehow survived being hit by a train. Even wilder, everyone in the car, like an elderly grandmother, an infant daughter and a young son — director James Gannon — all lived. Now, fifty years later, they have returned to a place they barely lived to tell from even if they can’t agree on what really happened.

This is an incredible short, filled with humor and darkness. But the best part is the closing line: “Guess what?  People do get hit by fucking trains.”

This definitely made me rethink when I cross those tracks down by Sheetz.

East End (2022): Director Grant Curatola’s East End looks like a late 70s to early 80s slasher and does something wonderful: It takes a crime in a small town and inflates it via the telephone game, as what may not be the worst crime of all time eventually becomes a horrific story that the entire town can’t stop talking about, all set to the music cues from Psycho. A fun idea, told well.

The Event (2022): Co-directed by Frank Mosley and writer Hugo De Sousa, who also appear in this film along with Jennifer Kim, this has Vincent (De Sousa) and Jack (Mosely), roommates and best friends, going back and forth over a short film that Vincent has made. Why hasn’t his friend watched it? Sure, it’s 2 AM, but come on, it’s the greatest thing he’s ever made, the joy of his life. And if he has a long way of explaining things that involves pasta, then so be it. But man, let Beatrice (Kim) sleep!

This hits harder than I would like to admit, because I want my wife to appreciate the work that I do or things that I write and she just says, “OK,” as she looks up from some phone game. Heartbreaking.

Everybody Goes to the Hospital (2021): This is an absolutely terrifying movie, the stop motion animated story of 4-year-old Little Mata (writer/director Tiffany Kimmel’s mother, as this is based on a true story) as she gets so sick that she has to go to the hospital in late 1963 with appendicitis and things get worse from there.

I don’t even know how you can recover from getting every single one of your organs taken out of your body and cleaned, but somehow this brave little child did. I was completely not prepared to be repeatedly emotionally barraged by this well-crafted short.

I just spent some time with my dad at an appointment in a hospital after watching this and man, I kept remembering the details of this movie. It stays with you.

Ex Creta (2022): No pun intended, but holy shit, this movie was great. Seriously, so unexpected and yeah, it’s a four-minute-long movie about a scatological artist but I don’t care. It made me laugh more times in a short period than some full-length movies dream of being able to do. Also: the dog!

Olivia Puckett, Emily Kron and Gabrielle Anise are great voice talents as well, moving the story so well while director and writer Jon Portman has crafted a singular work of art.

Buzkill (2022): Let me tell you, when you start your animated short off with a logo that says Canon Pictures and looks like Cannon Films, I’m going to love what comes next.

That said, it’s easy to love this movie, which is the story of Becky (Kelly McCormack, who is Jess McCready in the A League of Their Own Series) and Rick (Peter Ahern, also the director and writer), who return to her house after a date and their moment of romance is interrupted by an insect crawling out of her eyeball.

The animation is gorgeous, the story is amusing and I just loved the way that it all pays off. Buzzkill gets in more gross-out and laugh-out-loud moments in its short running time than most movies get in two hours.

Fantastic Fest’s patented bipedal program of short-subject cinema that buck conventions and blur boundaries of genre, aesthetics and taste returns with a barrage of provocative peculiarities. Expect the unexpected, but prepare for an array of unique sensibilities — from the polished to the anarchic — as absurdism and experimentation abound and silliness co-mingles with severity.

Alegrías Riojanas (2022): Experimental filmmaker Velasco Broca has created a short where an ophthalmologist has his urgent need for a confession interrupted when the priest leaves. Growing tired of waiting, he returns to his office and is killed by a car. Then, his soul travels through a purgatory populated by horrifying demons and devils. Where will his journey take him?

This movie is at once frightening and gorgeous. It’s unlike anything else I saw at Fantastic Fest.

Amor to Love (2022): Taco Bell’s new Grilled Stuft Corazon-a-rito. They say it has three layers of cheesy admiration and sizzling hot passionate ground beef all grilled to deep perfection. Yes, somehow, this was a film made for Taco Bell, but you know, as much as I hate corporations I for some reason I give a pass to Taco Bell. I mean, bean burritos. They’ve been a staple in my diet since I was a child, which is possibly why I’m so fat and fart so often. Also: this movie was fun. You can learn more at the official site.

The Breakdown Parables (2021): Directed and written by Emil Benjamin, this tells the story of a purgatory casting office, as the receptionist (Maria DeCotis) sees appointment after appointment. Through five stories, the actors within the waiting room experience a variety of human emotions as well as baring their truest self; anything in the pursuit of that big part, right? Does the receptionist have dreams of her own? Can anyone be friends in the business of show? Will this all end with a musical number? Is heaven real? Man, that’s a lot of questions. This answers at least a few of them. I certainly had no expectations of this, but if I did, they would have been exceeded. You can learn more at the official site.

From Water Comes Melon (2022): Micah Vassau directed and wrote this tale of the last watermelon on Earth. A young woman discovers it and must decide whether to keep it for herself or share it with the rest of what’s left of humanity. Also, rampant nudity for some reason. I never thought I’d watch a movie about post-apocalyptic watermelons appearing on a beach, but life is incredibly odd and I love that.

Hubbards (2021): There’s a guy who digs every day in a quest to find his brother’s bones. When he needs the sustenance it takes to excavate sibling skeleton parts in the dusty sand and dirt, well, he turns to Hubbards. You may as well. This was a four-part journey into weirdness that I enjoyed and wouldn’t mind watching again.

I Dreamed I Heard a Song Called Habibi (2022): An experimental mixed-media vibe that ruminates on technology, theater and transformation set to a soundscape by Your 33 Black Angels and directed by Benji Kast. It’s Psychedelic Baby Magazine referred to the music of this band as “Part XTC, part New Order, part VU; like Galaxie 500 being beaten up by Kraftwerk and the Wu-Tang Clan.” This animation was pretty wild. Check it out:

Precautionary Measure (2021): Created by Lizzy Deacon and Ika Schwander, this tells the story of Helen, who wins a life coaching session in a raffle at her local village hall. What follows is her life coach Helen guiding her through the help she never really needed. Together, they will explore healing strategies to cope with fear, rejection and grief. Maybe they’ll help one another. Maybe it’ll be a mess. They say the unexamined life is not worth living, but who are they anyway?

The Straight Ball (2022): Eugene Kotlyarenko and Nate Wilson made this story about a date that’s filled with information as it falls to pieces. It kind of gave me PTSD, reminding me that I’m really lucky that I’m inside on a cold Sunday night with my wife and not failing to connect with any other person. For that, this movie has made me very thankful.

The Fantastic Fest 2022 Shoft Fuse program promises “a monster roller coaster that takes you to not only the grotesquely sensual and painfully real, but also to the most surreal of other worlds.” There are nine movies to watch and you can see them for yourself when you buy a virtual badge here.

Blood Rites (2022): Directed by Helena Coan and written by Polly Stenham (The Neon Demon) based on the story by Daisy Johnson from her book Fen Stories, this is all about Arabella (Ellis George), Rose (Mirren Mack) and Great (Ella-Rae Smith), three vampiric women losing control as they hide in a house in the English Fens. This seems like a first version of a longer and more complex film, but for what exists now, it’s really well made and has some moments of true horror as you watch these young women feed. All three leads are quite talented and really embody their roles.

The novel that this was based on never explains if the girls are vampires, cannibals or just insane; hanging out a pub called the Fox and Hound, luring men back to their home to surround and devour. Johnson sets up the women quite starkly: “When we were younger we learnt men the way other people learnt languages or the violin. We cared only for what they wanted so much it ruined them. Men could pretend they were otherwise, could enact the illusion of self-control, but we knew the running stress of their minds.”

This is quick, dark and makes you want to drink more.

From.Beyond (2022):  Through the use of found footage and genre mixing, From.Beyond documents several of mankind’s first encounters with life from other planets. Directed by Fredrik S. Hana, who wrote this movie with Jamie Turville — and directed one of my favorite videos for Kvelertak’s “Månelyst” which references tons of horror movies — this is one odd short.

Hana creates a fake reality within this movie, a series of moments of various lives as they come to realization with the fact that we are no longer alone and never were. This is more art than commerce and I mean that with the greatest of meanings; I also believe that it’s the closest I’ve seen a movie get to what actual Disclosure will be like. This short feels occult; it is the hidden made true.

Gnomes (2022): Joggers have no idea that they’re about to enter the world of murderous sausage making gnomes who lure them in with mysterious glowing mushrooms. This movie has shocking amounts of gore and I say that lovingly; director Ruwan Suresh Heggelman, who wrote this with Jasper ten Hoor and Richard Raaphorst, knows how to keep things moving as fast as possible. We’re here to watch gnomes eat human beings and we get it. Oh do we get it.

I don’t even want to know what kind of Smurfs movie Heggelman could make. The horror. The horror.

In the Flesh (2022): Every morning, Tracey uses her bathtub faucet to get off. Then there’s this one time that instead of giving her the orgasm she craves, she instead gets a blast of black goo that won’t stop leaking out of her body. She loses her phone into the tub filled with sewage and must confront the super — and maybe destroy him — if she ever wants to get that elusive bit of bliss and wash all that black sludge out of her hair. Cheers to Daphne Gardner for this blast of fun.

The Night Shift (2022): An exhausted ambulance driver still dealing with his wife’s murder struggles through a long night shift which includes an encounter with a vampire using accidents to gain new victims. Filmed in the United Arab Emirates by director Ali F. Mustafa, who co-wrote this with Ahmad Abdulghani Alredha, this feels like it could easily be a much longer movie. The production is high quality and there are plenty of vehicular stunts. In fact, this has a bigger budget than most full-length streaming films that I watch. The idea of a vampire keeping the same hours as an EMT crew is a strong one and I’d love to see what this could become as it grows from a short.

Prom Car ’91 (2022): Let me fast forward this review and just say that this short is more than 100% everything I look for in movies. It’s so well shot and creative that even though you may have seen its story told before, you’ve never seen it told so well.

Carrie (McKenna Marmolejo, who owns every second she’s on screeen) and Don (Max Jablow) plan to have sex for the first time in the back of Don’s dad’s minivan on prom night. They’re invisible kids in 1991 but are the kind of geeks that rule the world today. He writes Rush-like science fiction songs about her; she watches Shaw Brothers movies. But just as they prepare to change their lives with some underage sex, they watch prom queen get slashed by two of their teachers, Mr. Little (Yuri Lowenthal, the video game voice of Spider-Man) and Ms. Cox (Jayne McLendon).

I can’t even emphasize how perfect every moment of this short is. It’s so charming, so filled with absolute joy. It made my day so much better watching it and I’m still smiling about it.

Ringworms (2022): A sinister cult looks to gain occult power through cursed worms and find the perfect host within Abbie, a young woman with commitment issues hours away from receiving a marriage proposal from the boyfriend she doesn’t even think she likes. Faye Nightingale, who plays the lead, is absolutely supercharged awesomeness; so is the direction by Will Lee. A splatter relationship movie that ends with a double blast of garbage disposal and black vomit mania, then topped by a head graphically splitting open to reveal a hand? Oh man — I loved every moment. I want more. So much more.

Roach Love (2022): Director Jacen Tan said, “We self-financed this low/no budget short because it’s too weird to be green-lit or funded by anyone.” This is a quick black and white movie about the erotic pleasures of stepping on cockroaches, a couple that shares this fetish and the comeuppance one of them earns. It’s well-shot and yes, very weird. You’ll see the ending coming but enjoy it anyway.

Swept Under (2022): Ethan Soo has directed a film that yes, is about a cursed carpet given to a young Cambodian man by his sister that ends up murdering him, but I loved that this movie efficiently and effectively contains a message about the way America’s policing the world has a dark history that is never discussed. There are some horrific real and manufactured moments in this film that really could be an entire anthology, as long as it keeps the perfect closing shot that this has.

There’s a shot in here of all the faces trapped within the carpet that is just plain sinister. There are so many layers to this story, even down to the disappearance of the Cambodian man at the end, that tie so perfectly into the sad story we have written. A near-perfect analogy well-told. Soo is one to keep an eye on.