These two short films appear with Edge of the Knife on Severin’s All the Haunts Be Ours Vol. 2 set.
Haida Carver (1964): On Canada’s Pacific coast, director Richard Gilbert shot this short film about young Haida artist, Robert Davidson, and shows how he shapes miniature totems from argillite, a jet-like stone.
While many of the Haida people his age have given up carving for fishing, which isn’t as time consuming and pays better, very few artists were left when this was made. We get to see how Robert finds stones and how he learned from his grandfather how to do this traditional art.
Davidson’s Haida name is G̲uud San Glans, which means “Eagle of the Dawn,” and he remains a leading figure in the renaissance of Haida art and culture. He said, “If we look at the world in the form of a circle, let us look at what is on the inside of the circle as experience, culture and knowledge: Let us look at this as the past. What is outside of the circle is yet to be experienced. But in order to expand the circle we must know what is inside the circle.”
Nalujuk Night (2021): Nalujuk Night is a tradition among the Inuit of Nunatsiavut, an annual event in which “startling figures that come from the Eastern sea ice, dressed in torn and tattered clothing, animal skins and furs” walk through the town, where they reward good children and chase the bad.
Directed by Jennie Williams, this was part of the National Film Board of Canada’s Labrador Documentary Project, which seeks to foster the creation of documentary films about Inuit culture from an Inuit perspective.
Set on January 6, this holiday is celebrated by the young and old alike. In a university paper, Jannelle Barbour wrote: “Nalujuks are not real. They are like the boogey-men of other cultures. But, where this event takes place every year, everyone takes the Nalujuks to be a real thing. Most children and some adults are deathly afraid of them.”
She goes on to say, “Nalujuk’s night is truly a very exciting and scary time for all youth. The night starts off down to the community hall, where there are four or five people dressed as Nalujuks. These Nalujuks aren’t the ones that actually chase the children around town, trying to hit them. These Nalujuks are just there to show the younger children…what a Nalujuk is. After everyone leaves the hall, the real fun and games begin. Usually there are a lot of Nalajuks out running around, and there is always this one big and scary one, this one usually has the biggest weapon. It is really scary to get caught by this one. In Nain, there is always one spot where all the kids gather to stay safe. It’s usually on the steps of a person’s house. No one seems to mind though, seeing that this only happens once a year.”
I would never know of this event without Severin’s box set.
These short films are part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2.
These three short films appear with The White Reindeer on Severin’s All the Haunts Be Ours Vol. 2 set.
A Witch’s Drum (1982): In this animated film by Kari Kekkonen and writers Outi Nyytäjä and Samuli Paulaharju, a man in a reindeer sled is taking the corpse of a shaman to where it will be barried. This takes him through a barren, snowy world illuminated only by the moon.
Narrated by Matti Ruohola, we soon discover that something has woken the shaman, who is in the same sled as the man, all alone, terrified as he had just watched the man die that evening.
Noitarumpu is a simple yet scary movie, mainly colored pencil art and the steady beat of that drum, ever playing as it takes its listener across that ice adn snow filled tundra to an uncertain fate.
The Nightside of the Sky (2024): This experimental short film reanimates The White Reindeer through contact and optical printing. It was specially commissioned from celebrated Métis filmmaker Rhayne Vernette for Severin. As ominous music plays in the background, these grainy images are recontextualized in the film, creating what seems to be nearly fine art within a set that is meant to show different notions of folk horror.
If you’re creating your own film festival with this set, this would be the perfect movie to put on before it stars, as it will get you in the mood for what you are about to see in Erik Blomberg’s movie. I found it sparse yet dreamingly gorgeous.
With the Reindeer (1947): The first movie by director Erik Blomberg, working with Eino Mäkinen, this shows what reindeer herding was like in the mid 1940s in Lapland. Called Porojen parissa, filming these scenes had to give its creator some context into what the reindeer herders and their families endured before he made his landmark movie.
What a feast to have this as part of the set. I realize that it also appeared on the Eureka release, but it’s still a great part of the overall package. Even in his first work, Blomberg was able to capture some incredible visuals and give you the chill of being in those snowy fields through the lense of his camera.
Our Selves Unknown is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2.
In this short, director Carter Lord sets his camera on artist Don Seiler, as he creates a 10-ton concrete sculptural commission in honor of Olympic swimmer Mark Spitz that would be placed outside the International Swimming Hall of Fame in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Lord would go on to direct The Enchanted, while Seiler would paint the animals that appear on the walls throughout that movie.
What’s incredible is that for all his work and the size of this sculpture, Seiler was only being paid $3,000. The most his art had sold for was $6,000 and he had given that away.
Some may find this somewhat slow, just watching a man sculpt, but to me, seeing this part of the creation process is amazing. Lord only made one other movie, other than this and The Enchanted, Lithium Springs.
You can learn more about Seiler’s life on his official web site, which even goes into the dates in which he was married, including one marriage to the heir of Molson beer.
The Swimmer is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2.
This three-minute, wordless black and white short by Edwin Rostron appears in the All the Haunts Be Ours Vol. 2 set from Severin. You can also watch it on Vimeo.
The director says of this, “Our Selves Unknown takes the book Landscape in Distress as its raw material, reconfiguring its photographic illustrations, text and cover design into pencil and ink drawings, using a working process of self-enforced rules and restrictions, obstacles and chance.
Published by the Architectural Press in 1965, Landscape in Distress was written by Lionel Brett, a British peer, architect and town-planner. The book examined 250 square miles of Oxfordshire, recording “in intimate detail the post-war changes and present state of the landscape of a typical section of…Britain.” It described the damage that had been done to the area and tried to alert the reader to “the inevitable damage that lies ahead”, drawing specific attention to the increasing homogenisation of areas on the edges of cities.”
I loved the look of this. Graphite drawings that are intersected with black splotches as bites of words from the story quickly appear. It seems as if the intrusions of man on nature are being called out, as the ruin of man rebuilding after the war leads to something even worse: the same, all over the same, the ancient and unique and mysterious now the expected.
Our Selves Unknown is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2.
Directed and written by Sean Hogan, this was made to accompany the book Yuletide Terror: Christmas Horror on Film and Television, which was edited by Kier-La Janisse.
Patrick (Billy Clarke) is an older man lives in a seaside British town, a place that only sees life when the tourists are the in summer. Now it’s the bitterly cold holidays and it seems as if things will remain dreary until his long lost daughter Nina (Jamie Birkett) shows up. That seems to be better than the voices that Patrick hears from the sea (Belinda Kordic) until we start to realize that while he’s the protagonist of this story, Patrick may not be the hero.
Horror for the holidays was once a strictly British phenomena, but now that the world has become smaller through the web, we can all celebrate these dark films. Perhaps in the darkness that we find within them, we may avoid the mistakes of their characters.
We Always Find Ourselves In the Sea is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including commentary by director Sean Hogan and co-producers Paul Goodwin And Nicholas Harwood and a press kit.
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.
In rural 17th century England, Squire Marlow (Mark Carlisle) offers several men double their normal wages if they carry his son’s coffin to the graveyard by night. The group includes best friend of the dead man Holt (Harry Roebuck), the drunken Ransley (James Swanton), the servant Pike (Richard Rowden) and the Squire, who wants to say goodbye to his son.
Despite the warnings and superstitions, they undertake the walk and begin to argue, as both Holt and Ransley had wronged the Squire’s son, who promises revenge. As it grows darker, they begin to see an ominous dog and spectres surrounding them.
I never heard of a corpse road before this. As England grew and churches became closer together, ministers had these highways created to connect faraway locations and mother churches with the main church having the burial rights. That means that poorer people had to transport the dead many miles through dangerous terrain. Unless they were a wealthy family, that meany that pallbearers would shoulder them by hand the whole way.
These roads were left unplowed and sometimes went near and even through homes, as changing the route was bad luck. This is also where the legends of corpse candles or fires started, as they were lights that would enlighten the pathway to the grave.
While a bit talkative and like a stage play, this was a great start to the All the Haunts Be Ours Volume Two set. Now I need to watch Sean Hogan’s other films. I’d seen his part in Little Deaths, but now I want to track down The Devil’s Business and Lie Still, as well as the fan films he made, The Thing: 27,000 Hours and Halloween:H33. I haven’t had the benefit of watching much 1970s British TV horror and I’ve read how scary it can be.
As always, I have so much homework to do.
To Fire You Come At Last is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2. It has extras including commentary by director Sean Hogan and co-producers Paul Goodwin And Nicholas Harwood; On The Lych Way in which Corpse Road Chronicler Dr. Stuart Dunn discusses the Pathways Of The Dead; a trailer and two short films, We Always Find Ourselves In the Sea and Our Selves Unknown.
18. THE EYES HAVE IT: Elect to watch one with an eye specific scene. See what I did there?
Luis Buñuel pretty much invented cinematic surrealism. He said that when he filmed, he knew “exactly how each scene will be shot and what the final montage will be.” From this film to The Exterminating Angel, Belle de jour and Tristana and so many more, his influence as a filmmaker is incalculable.
Just as dominant is his co-writer, Salvador Dali, whose is synonymous with surrealism. In fact, when he needed a dream sequence for Spellbound, Alfred Hitchcock allowed Dali to direct it. Of course, it was cut, but that’s how well-regarded he was.
Words like dream logic weren’t used yet but this is it. It begins with a woman having her eyeball sliced open, then the screen says, “Eight years later,” just in time for a boy in a nun’s habit to crash outside her home, lose his hand and appear in her the eyeless woman’s apartment as ants walk out of a hole in his hand.
That same man watches with pleasure as a woman takes that hand before being hit by a car before trying to assault the woman, then dragging around two grand pianos, several dead donkeys and the Ten Commandments.
Time keeps changing, whether it’s around three in the morning or sixteen years ago or in spring. This is all a dream of its creators, starting with Buñuel telling Dali that he had a vision of a cloud going across the moon, “like a razor blade slicing through an eye.” Dali said, “There’s the film, let’s go and make it.”
There was one rule: Do not dwell on what required purely rational, psychological or cultural explanations. Open the way to the irrational. It was accepted only that which struck us, regardless of the meaning. Buñuel also said, “Nothing, in the film, symbolizes anything. The only method of investigation of the symbols would be, perhaps, psychoanalysis.”
When this debuted at the Studio des Ursulines, Pablo Picasso, Le Corbusier, Jean Cocteau, Christian Bérard, Georges Auric and André Breton’s Surrealist group were in the audience watching. Buñuel had rocks in his pockets in case there was a riot. He had wanted to insult the intellectuals with this, saying, “What can I do about the people who adore all that is new, even when it goes against their deepest convictions, or about the insincere, corrupt press, and the inane herd that saw beauty or poetry in something which was basically no more than a desperate impassioned call for murder?”
There’s an urban legend that two women miscarried while watching this. Maybe it was the eyeball — a calf’s eye — or maybe Buñuel and Dali also invented being William Castle.
Here are the short films that I watched at this year’s Fantastic Fest.
A Fermenting Woman (2024): Visionary chef and master fermenter Marielle Lau (Sook-Yin Lee) is about to be let go from the restaurant that she has given her life to. However, she has an idea to save things, as she begins to ferment a new dish that has an ingredient that truly feels like part of her. Directed by Priscilla Galvez and written by Maisie Jacobson, this puts you directly into the kitchen and all the time and energy that this dish takes. And perhaps it’s a pun to say that it has her blood and sweat in it, because Marielle uses her menstrual blood in her garden, so she decides that it should be the main ingredient in this fermented food. Marielle has taken a piece of her, perhaps the egg that she will never get to fertilize, and gives it to people who don’t pay attention to a bite of their meal, instead ignoring it as simple sustenance when she has given everything to make it into their mouths. The truest horror is that we create — whether its foods or the words you’re reading now — just so that they can be consumed and forgotten.
ATOM & VOID (2024): Gonçalo Almeida has magic here, a mixture of effects and real spider, as it watches the end of all things and perhaps the birth of a new adventure. The score, sound design and look of this film all work together to create perfection, just a true joy of watching and listening. In fact, I went back several times and saw it again, one of the few advantages of seeing this online and not in a theater. If you get the opportunity to watch it, take it. This is a short that I will think of far beyond most full length movies I see this year.
Be Right Back (2023): Ah, the worst words to say in a horror movie. In this short, Maria is left home alone while her mother goes to buy dinner. However, her mother takes way longer than she should and as the night grows dark, Maria is startled when she hears a knock on the door. Is it her mother? Or is it something else? Have you ever gone shopping when you were young and gotten lost, then looked for your parents only to find someone who you thought were them and were instead strangers? That’s the feeling that this creates and it is not one I ever thought that I would live through ever again.
A Brighter Summer Day for the Lady Avengers (2024): As if I couldn’t love this short enough, just check out this paragraph from its creator, Birdy Wei-Ting Hung: “My first encounter with Yang Chia-Yun’s Fēng Kuáng Nǚ Shā Xīng / The Lady Avenger (1982) was an uncanny experience. I was researching Italian giallo film when a vintage newspaper movie poster grabbed my attention. The advert depicted a sensational female vigilante that visually recalled Edwige Fenech in Tutti i colori del buio / All the Colors of the Dark (Sergio Martino, 1972), only this time it was an Asian woman’s face. Her alluring body was barely covered by a white sheet, and her lustrous black hair rested on her collarbones. Standing in a martial art squat stance, the way she holds a katana (Japanese sword) is reminiscent of Meiko Kaji in Shurayuki-hime / Lady Snowblood (Toshiya Fujita, 1973) and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill(Quentin Tarantino, 2003). I had found our lady avenger Wan-Ching, who was played by Hsiao-Feng Lu—the Taiwanese “sexy goddess” of the 1980s, and Taiwanese pulp films.”
This short is a video essay that mixes “two specific female characters in Taiwan Pulp films and Taiwanese New Wave…the female protagonists in Yang’s The Lady Avenger, and in Edward Yang’s Gǔ Lǐng Jiē Shǎo Nián Shā Rén Shì Jiàn / A Brighter Summer Day.”
I love that this film puts these movies against one another, just as a young woman spends a day in the theater savoring a watermelon drink while watching several films beyond the two mentioned, as Deep Red is one of them. A sexual awakening as well as an exploration of what film tells its viewers about the path that being a woman can take, this is one of the most gorgeous shorts I’ve seen in years. I want people to just give Birdy Wei-Ting Hung as much money as she needs to create movies that will inspire us in the same way that films have motivated her.
Bunnyhood (2024): “Mum would never lie to me, would she?” In this short by director Mansi Maheshwari, writers James Davis and Anna Moore, as well as several talented animators, Bobby (Maheshwari) learns the answer as he is rushed to the hospital. The frenetic style of the animation creates the worries of childhood, replicating the fears that aren’t always rooted in the rational or the real. The hospital and surgery come across as horrific places where nothing good can happen and at times, our parents will lie to us to keep us from worrying about the truth. Is that the right way to be a parent? Who can say!
CHECK PLEASE (2024): I am a veteran of the wars of fighting for the check. The director, Shane Chung, is too. He said, “As a kid, I witnessed firsthand the quickness with which friends can turn on each other whenever my parents took me to dinner with their pals. It was all smiles until it came time to pay for the bill – then the fangs came out. “I got it!” “Don’t be ridiculous, it’s my treat!” “You can get me next time!” It got so serious for no reason. Arguing, subterfuge… it was killing with kindness taken to another level. I wondered how far someone could take fighting to pay for the bill. Inspired by my love of goofy slapstick action comedies like Drunken Master and Everything Everywhere All At Once, I thought: what if they literally fought each other? I challenged myself to write a ten-minute long action scene where two Korean-Americans fought each other with chopsticks, grill coverings, and credit cards… and CHECK PLEASE was born.”
Starring Richard Yan and Sukwon Jeong, this is a simple story but is so perfect. It gets across what it means to be a man — paying the bill — as well as the director’s attempts at getting across the feeling of assimilating to a new culture. It’s also filled with great action. I laughed really hard throughout and found joy here.
Compost (2024): Directed by Augusto and Matías Sinay, this film presents an intriguing way at looking at grief. Anastasia (Natalia di Cienzo) has just lost the love of her life, Lisandro (Maximiliano Gallo), after an accident as he builds the greenhouse where she plans on spending most of her time. How can a dream place be as such when it is filled with so much pain? And can she carry through with his last wish, which is to become compost for their plants? Can we become part of the cycle of death and rebirth when emotions are part of our equation, unlike the plants that we help bring to birth each year, only to have to watch them die in the fall?
Considering Cats (2024): A short experimental documentary shot at the Long Island Pet Expo in 2023 by director Matt Newby, this short asks us to “Take a moment to consider the cat.” Seeing as how I live with two, I do this every day. This does a good job of showing the joy that people find in the small creatures that become part of our lives, if only for a short time, in an interesting lo-fi style.
Do Bangladroids Dream of Electric Tagore? (2024): Allem Hossain’s short is described as “desi-futuristic sci-fi.” Interesting. The director says that this genre is “a body of sci-fi work that dares to imagine speculative futures through a South Asian lens.”
In this, a documentarian goes into the New Jersey Exclusion Zone to meet the droids that live there and learn why they are obsessed with a subversive Bengali Renaissance poet. Featuring the poem “Freedom” by Rabindranath Tagore, which is read by Bernard White, this is AI generated but its director asks us to think of “how AI and other technology will impact us but I think we should also be thinking about our moral and ethical responsibilities towards what we create.”
Don’t Talk to Strangers (2023): Imanol Ortiz López has created a short that looks like vintage Kodachrome and is set within a toy store that only looks bright and friendly. Even the IMDB description of this movie is somewhat scary: “Mom always told me not to talk to strangers, but Agustín is not a stranger, because whenever we go to his store he offers me treats.” A young girl is saying that and in this, she’s played by Inés Fernández, who explains how she was abducted by Agustín (Julio Hidalgo). It sounds simple and expected, but in no way does what is revealed end up that way. A really interesting short.
Down Is the New Up (2018): Directed and written by Camille Cabbabe, this is the story of how an ambitious filmmaker and his crew attempt to tell the story of the last hours of a man who plans on killing himself at dawn. To be honest, I found it kind of indulgent and wish that I had spent a bit more time watching it. Maybe it was the language barrier or honestly how many shorts I watched in a few days, but there wasn’t anything here that jumped and grabbed me. I feel I owe the filmmaker an apology and am certainly willing to try and see what was here one more time.
DUCK (2024): The sell copy for this promises that this is “a classic spy thriller turned on its head.” What it is is a deep fake generated film starring almost every actor to blame James Bond and Marilyn Monroe, all voiced by director and writer Rachel Maclean.
As someone who uses AI for my real job and to create music, I have no hate for it. I do, however, dislike this movie. It should be something I love, one that gets into aliens and conspiracies while using pop culture characters. Instead, it feels like robbing the graves of the cemetery at the lowest part of Uncanny Valley. It goes on and on, reminding you of the much better work of the actors who it is raising from the dead to serve as stiff actors for a plot that can be worked out in seconds. I believe AI and deep fake can create the kind of cinema that we want to see, movies that create joy. This just engendered ennui.
Empty Jars (2024): After the last two shorts I watched, this brought back the love I have for film. Director Guillermo Ribbeck Sepúlveda has crafted a fantasy world where a woman (Ana Burgos) deals with the loud guests at her hostel by freeing a ghost from a jar, a spirit that, well, fills her with something else, giving her an experience that she hopes to replicate again and again. Yet, as this movie shares with us, the dead are even less trustworthy than the living. What a gorgeous looking and feeling short. I can’t wait to see what else Sepúlveda can do!
Faces (2024): Look out for Blake Simon. In this film by the director and writer, he starts with Judy (Cailyn Rice) being invited to a fraternity party by Brad (Ethan Daniel Corbett). However, in the ether all around this is a character called The Entity, a creature that has been abducting women the same age as our heroine, such as Bridget Henson. Now, as the frat party hits its height, the struggle for identity and who or what people are plays out. Faces feels like an entire film in its short running time and could easily become a full length feature. Whatever The Entity is, whatever it is looking for and why it does what it does are all unimportant. What is is that Simon seems ready to become a valued new talent in horror and this announces him so well.
Godfart (2023): Directed and written by Michael Langan, this is “The very true story of how the universe was created.” God (Russell Hodgkinson) is looking for breakfast. This short explains it all. This is part of something called the Doxology Universe. As someone who loves breakfast, I want to know more.
How My Grandmother Became A Chair (2020): Director and writer Nicolas Fattouh has created the perfect way of showing what it’s like to slowly lose an aging family member, something that I have gone through several times of the past years. His grandmother is losing her senses, one by one, until she — as the title lets you know early — becomes immobile furniture. There are times when it takes animation and the surreal to make life — which never makes all that much sense — something more easily explainable. This looks so wonderful and moves so perfectly that even though I knew where it was going, it still ended up as an emotional experience.
Huntsville, July 1981 (2024): In Sol Friedman’s short, four characters must deal with the ferocious attacks of a creature that is hiding in the woods. I loved the look of this, which seems like the wildest sketches the weirdest kid in school made and here they are, coming to life.
J’ai le Cafard (Bint Werdan) (2020): “J’ai le cafard” means “I have the cockroach,” yet it also means “I am depressed.” Director and writer Maysaa Almumin is followed everywhere by a dying large cockroach, which is her mental anguish. She connects more with this gigantic roach than anyone else around her until she realizes the impact that it is having on her life. I loved the puppet work and enjoyed seeing how this idea came to life. Can you be friends with an insect? This movie asks that question and I think the answer is yes, but roaches can be just as infuriating as people.
Manivelle: The Last Days of the Man of Tomorrow (2017): Directed by Fadi Baki Fdz, who wrote this with Omar Khouri and Lina Mounzer, this takes a realistic look at an unrealistic story, exploring the life of Manivelle, an automaton from Lebanon whose life seems to mirror the history of the country. His glory years were in the past, when life felt free, and today he is falling to pieces, his body failing him, reaching out in vain to people whose lives he ruined. Manivelle has been an actor, a soldier and now, he’s just a lost robot that claims to run a museum and read books, but he fails at all of that. I absolutely loved how this was shot. It’s perfect.
Yummo Spot (2024): Directed and written by Ashley Brandon, this is about a couple who moves to the woods and tries to start a family. Soon they learn that the Live, Laugh, Love lifestyle may be more difficult than they thought. This had a strange vibe but you may enjoy it more than me.
Two of Hearts (2024):Director and writer Mashie Alam places a boy (Anaiah Lebreton) and a girl (Basia Wyszynski) in a battle over some decisions, like eating a piece of pizza. Are they brother and sister? Are they a couple? Where did they get all of those great clothes? What’s happening? This is one of those times when the way something is filmed outdoes the basics of the script. Does the title refer to a Stacey Q song? Where is this house where they live? Can I visit? This movie has an amazing look and I want all of the answers to these questions and so many more. It’s good to have questions. It’s good to want to know more.
Skeeter (2024): Chris McInroy gets me every time. Actually, he’s made me physically sick a few of those times, no complaints. That’s because his movies are always fun, like this one, where someone has been raised by mosquitoes. If you’ve seen his movies Guts, We Joined a Cultand We Forgot About the Zombies, you know what you’re in for here. Thank you again, Chris, for shocking me and reminding me to never eat popcorn — or any food — during your movies.
Lara Shultz (Nicole Cates) is a hitwoman with a difference — she suffers from dissociative amnesia. In Director Sean Justin Norona’s action/thriller short Blackout, Shultz goes on an existential journey she didn’t expect to take, but it’s one from which she can never turn back.
Norona, who cowrote the screenplay with Kayla Lucky, packs quite a bit into Blackout’s 19-minutes running time. Along with learning how Lara came to be a killer for hire, plenty of well-choreographed hand-to-hand combat and gunplay are on display. The short offers much more than simply action, though, as it really takes viewers inside the mind of its protagonist.
Cates makes for a strong lead, delivering solid narration and an impressive physical performance. Norona helms the short well. His choreography captures the proceedings nicely and his editing keeps the events flowing at a brisk clip.
Blackout is a super-assassin origin story that works just fine as a complete tale in short-film time, but I think the world building on display here has the potential for a highly intriguing feature film.
Blackoutis currently on the film festival circuit.
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