Horror has always been largely made up of and by social outsiders. Its greatest stories are, more often than not, grown from the seeds of social struggles, whether we see the context in them or not. Occasionally—like with George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, according to the man himself—the commentary is truly accidental, though no less prescient. Queerness in horror, though, is usually much more intentional. The recent emphasis on creation and celebration of more queer horror has been great fun to watch unfold and makes the entries in Final Girls Berlin Fest’s short film block of the same theme all the more exciting to watch. The films on display here are unapologetically queer, seeking in turns to normalize the experience and find joy in making it as weird and confrontational as possible.
The queer horror block runs the gamut from heartwarming to stomach turning to strangely endearing, hardly pausing for breath along the way. Writer-director Andy Rose Fidoten’s “Gay Teen Werewolf” is an excellent opener about a young, disillusioned werewolf trying to come to terms with her identity. Her queerness is normalized to the point of being far from the story’s central focus. The world in which the Gay Teen Werewolf (Chloe Simone Crawford) hardly bats an eye at queerness. What gives her pause is her werewolf nature, and what lures her out is Cassandra (Nadira Foster-Williams), an enigmatic, seemingly unafraid girl that she’s pretty sure is a vampire. “Gay Teen Werewolf” is as much a celebration of self as it is a reckoning with it. While the struggle at its heart is important and central to the story, it is rooted in explorations of queer joy, and for that it is a beautiful entry down the rabbit hole of the rest of the block’s offerings.
Lest we get too comfortable in our warm, fuzzy feelings over Fidoten’s short, Susannah Farrugia enters to make sure we know that not every story is out to make us feel good. Sometimes, we must witness the depth of suffering that comes with suppressing our desires and true selves. “Itch” is a vibrantly uncomfortable watch about a young nun named Sister Jude (Loren O’Dair) who struggles to hide her lustful feelings for Sister Agatha (Alexandra Dowling). Her battle manifests in an itching fit that increases in intensity with every passing thought, sending her spiraling into a world of physical and mental anguish unlike anything I’ve ever seen. If SAINT MAUD cranked itself up to 11, it might come a little close to “Itch”. It’s extreme body horror that’s guaranteed to have you squirming in your seat and folding yourself up to try and escape the increasingly graphic scenes before you.
“Itch” isn’t the only one seemingly bent on making the viewers revel in stomach-turning visuals, however. The filmmakers of these shorts have pulled out all the stops to tell their tales, and we have little choice but to bear witness. And on the one hand, giving minority creators the space to be unapologetically gross is something to be celebrated, even if it makes us a little queasy in the watching. Everything is good to someone and destroying comfortable and accepted narratives should be the name of the game when it comes to welcoming new ideas and creators into the arena. That said, writer-director Maren Moreno’s “Protection Spell” is one of the most difficult watches in the entire festival run. She allows herself and her characters a world where they can explore, albeit in artistic fashion, their bodies and desires in visually strange and confrontational ways. Never thought I would see a film that centered a scene of someone stuffing a condom with cake and flowers and then taking it to someone as an offering, but Moreno has made it happen. The one-two punch of “Itch” and “Protection Spell” is proof enough that the creators at this year’s fest came to play with all the tools you didn’t even really know were available, and they don’t care if they make you uncomfortable in the process. And honestly, good for them.
Offering a brief break from the back-to-back body horror is “Sundown Town”, directed by Mylo Butler and written by Butler and Jada Lewter. Bryce (Tashan Thornton) and Mitchell (Michael Haggerty) are a mixed-race couple on their way home after a road trip to California. When they stop for gas in a nowhere-township, Bryce begins having visions of some of the town’s victims. When they’re stopped by the cops later in the day, things turn violent. As the cops insult Bryce and assault both men, the spirits of Black victims of police violence show themselves to Bryce and help him to gain the strength to escape the first cop’s hold on him and save Mitchell. It’s a poignant story tinged with equal parts tragedy and reckoning, about the stories and the lives and experiences that keep being passed down in an endless cycle of racism and homophobia, only to be broken by dismantling those with too much power and too narrow beliefs. “Sundown Town” is one of the fest’s most painfully heartbreaking but necessary shorts.
I don’t quite know what to say with writer-director Elizabeth Rakhilkina’s “New Flesh for the Old Ceremony”. In its own way it’s a powerful tale of love in all sorts of extremes, albeit an unusual one. When Virginia (LeAnne Hutchson) dies in a strangely violent manner, her wife (Ana Maria Jomolca) mourns and takes revenge in an equally disturbing eye-for-an-eye fashion against those responsible—their five dogs. Equal parts heartbreaking and horrific, “New Flesh” will certainly leave you thinking about the lengths you’d go to avenge your loved ones long after the credits roll.
The shorts of the Queer Horror block run an emotional gamut that can be a little disorienting to take in one right after the other, but it is at least bookended with stories of queer joy and discovery. “Monsterdyke”, written and directed by Kaye Adelaide and Mariel Scammel, is exactly what it sounds like. A trans sculptor (Adelaide), exhausted with the disappointing history she’s had with men. As she works on Andromeda, her newest piece, it slowly comes to life and leads her to an unexpected lesbian awakening. The short opens with a tumblr quote: “there are only two genders: monster fuckers and cowards”, and that, really, says everything there is to say about “Monsterdyke”. Check your judgements at the door if you have them, all that matters is her happiness.
There’s something truly refreshing about a festival that carves out space for pieces that will lash you around like a violent ocean storm and make you bear witness to the full range of human experience. Take it or leave it, it seems to be Final Girls Berlin’s MO this year, and the journey is proving hard to forget.
Tags: Alexandra Dowling, Ana Maria Jomolca, Andy Rose Fidoten, Chloe Simone Crawford, Elizabeth Rakhilkina, Film Festival, Final Girls, Final Girls Berlin, Final Girls Berlin Film Festival, Gay Teen Werewolf, Itch, Kaye Adelaide, LeAnne Hutchson, LGBTQ+ Horror, Loren O'Dair, Maren Moreno, Mariel Scammel, Michael Haggerty, Monsterdyke, Nadira Foster-Williams, New Flesh for the Old Ceremony, night of the living dead, Protection Spell, Queer Horror, Saint Maud, short films, shorts, Sundown Town, Susannah Farrugia, Tashan Thornton
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