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.
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