It’s really too bad that horror shorts are such a difficult thing to sell to a wide audience since they’re often the most effective delivery system for a quick shot of terror and a compelling concept that may or may not hold water for an entire 90 minutes. The over/under on whether it’ll be a quality short is, in my experience, even a bit better than it is for full-length horror movies when you consider the entire landscape, and all without much of a time commitment. Better still is when a short is clearly made by a visionary early on their path, offering a small, perfect taste of the weird wonders to come in their career.
This is the second of six planned seasons of ETHERIA’s special brand of bite-sized, goopy goodness. Born from the successful California-based Etheria Film Festival, the focus here is on women working in genre. Mostly horror, of course, but some sci-fi and exploitation-style action creeps in as well, and thank goodness for it. There’s the unevenness that pops up in most speculative anthology collections, but overall, the sheer breadth of imagination and clever filmmaking techniques on display here are a real treat. More importantly for anyone clicking around on streaming sites: It’s a hell of a lot of fun.
“Sweet Little Unforgettable Thing” (AKA “Slut”) — Written & directed by Chloe Okuno. Originally released in 2014.
Maddy (Molly McIntyre) is a pretty but shy girl who lives with a seemingly catatonic grandmother and has the lack of confidence that a lonely home situation usually engenders in a teenager. Still, she manages to catch the eye of the new boy in town, played by James Gallo, and what follows is one of the most heartbreakingly effective makeover montages in recent film history. Sadly, it turns out this stranger is bad news not only for our heroine but also for any other woman unlucky enough to cross his path at night, and it starts looking like this coming of age tale is going to veer into something much darker.
We come out of the gate strong. Mixing THE HITCHER-style violence with tense home invasion beats, some effective dark humor, and an attack involving a makeup item that’s become classic in horror films over the decades, Okuno delivers a slick but substantive tale. While the destructive tendencies of misogyny are plainly laid out here, the message is buoyed by top-shelf horror filmmaking that would work even if it was a silent film.
“Sheila Scorned” — Written & directed by Mara Gasbarro Tasker. Originally released in 2015.
Sheila (Laine Rettmer) is a dancer at a gentlemen’s club. A violent encounter with her ex-boyfriend leads to her abduction by the dangerous losers he was entangled with. Thankfully, Sheila can fight as well as she can dance, which ensures one hell of a memorable night.
Deliberately styled as a new nü-Grindhouse actioner, where “Sheila Scorned” falters in the dialogue department is made up for in the well-choreographed and edited fight sequences and Rettmer’s sexy, strong, and confident delivery. This feels like just a taste of a Cannon-esque action series starring Sheila, and I want it now.
“Gödel Incomplete” — Written & Directed by Martha Goddard. Originally released in 2013.
Yes, it’s that towering logician Kurt Gödel that’s the namesake to this romantic time travel tale. Serita (Elizabeth Debicki, whose career has blown up considerably since) is a particle physicist working on the Large Hadron Collider. When her work of smashing atoms seemingly pops her into the actualization of time travel, Serita is pulled into twinkling, whirlwind visitations with Gödel himself.
More than being one of the more aesthetically brilliant and accomplished shorts, “Gödel Incomplete” also successfully wrestles with immense themes while retaining an intimate approach. This film doesn’t even clock in at 15 minutes, yet memorable and impactful character quirks are effortlessly incorporated in with the flashier elements to ground the whole thing. I was moved by this tale, and it completely captured my imagination by thoughtfully balancing cinematic romance with physics (centered around the Gödel metric), all in an approachable manner that didn’t talk down to the audience. This is one I can easily see fleshed out into a full-length feature, and I’ve added Goddard to my list of burgeoning talents to keep a close eye on.
“Shevenge” — Directed by Amber Benson, written by David Greenman and
Megan Lee Joy. Originally released in 2015.
At a slumber party that can only exist in the land of half-baked horror tales, a group of friends fantasize about getting revenge on the various crummy men in their lives.
Sadly, this one didn’t work at all for me. It’s jarring to enjoy story after story of flawed but strong women before tripping over one that revels in the most insulting stereotypes about women and how they behave in a group together. To know me is to know I love horror comedies, but the humor here is boring, juvenile, and delivered in a way that feels automatic and devoid of genuine fun. It makes me wish Benson had a hand in the script herself, as in the years since her memorable turn as Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer she’s built a successful fiction writing career, mostly in the urban fantasy genre. While it’s fun to look at in a plastic, candy-coated way, this grated instead of entertained.
“Cowboy Kill Club” — Written & directed by Gabrielle Lim & Jean Parsons. Originally released in 2015.
A small group of disenfranchised dancers at a club in Bangkok’s red light district stumble onto an especially sick new venture in the sex trade that goes beyond non-consent. Sometimes vengeance can only truly be served with a woman’s unique touch.
We’ve come back strong, and “Cowboy Kill Club” proves that the zombie concept still has legs as long as you have something original and interesting for them to do. The location becomes a memorable character on its own, and the action is fast-paced and brutally efficient, making this a memorable action-horror hybrid.
“Carved” — Directed by Mary C. Russell, written by Mary C. Russell and Stephen Czerwinksi. Originally released in 2015.
Road trip!
We open with a great inmate versus cop nighttime desert scenario that Horace Pinker himself would appreciate. No rest for the wicked, however, as this plot soon clashes with a car full of girlfriends on their way to party in Vegas, and things have gotten a little otherworldly out on the open road.
“Carved” was another letdown for me, especially because so much here works. While the body-piloted-by-evil trope is nothing new, having it happen to a group of women is a fresh idea that can provide so many wonderfully horrific scenarios. It’s also one of the best shot of the shorts, handling an outdoor night setting and plenty of car scenes as ably as any big budget genre film, with lots of great blood to boot.
Sadly, we’re saddled with that time-honored horror convention that no one likes: a group of friends who seem to absolutely hate each other, you could never imagine them having any kind of solidarity at any point in their relationship, and they mostly just scream or use baffling sarcasm to one another instead of just talking while having a personality. They wear thin very quickly, and that kind of inattention to any kind of inner life for the characters left me completely cold. Still, if you’ve become numb to that approach, this has some real mean fun to enjoy.
“El Gigante” — Directed by Gigi Saul Guerrero, written by Shane McKenzie. Originally released in 2014.
Armando (Edwin Perez) just wants to get over the Mexico/US border without incident, but he’s almost immediately captured by a family that quickly puts him to work in the grisliest luchador fight of all time.
Based on Shane McKenzie’s modern classic from Deadite Press, Muerte Con Carne, “El Gigante” is a diseased powerhouse of everything wonderful about no-holds-barred, gutter-gore, sinew-stretching horror. As outlandish as many of the characters are, they’re layered, fascinating, and we can’t help but be terrified for our sympathetic masked hero.
That said, the grue here is just exquisite, with close-ups that’ll get a visceral reaction from even the most hardened splatterpunk (from an all-woman effects and makeup crew as well, including Caroline Williams, who’s rightfully one of the most in-demand in the business right now) Gigi Saul Guerrero has been making massive waves in the horror field in the past few years, and now’s the perfect time to discover that she had the magic from the get-go or revisit a mean slice of old-school horror with a wonderfully dark humored ending. Also, a special shout-out to the sound design: It’s just as painfully potent as the special makeup effects and may cause the viewer to experience a momentary sympathy headache.
“Zone 2” — Directed by Anna Elizabeth James, written by Lydia Mulvey. Originally released in 2015.
In a post-apocalyptic world, a young disabled man named David (Connor Linnerooth) only has Lisa (Anne Ramsay) to count on for protection and sustenance.
Set in a single, cramped room, “Zone 2” takes the challenge of a short runtime and limited space and excels. A complex relationship is expertly established almost immediately thanks to naturalistic dialogue and the camera’s careful attention to where it takes its close ups. While this is more of a suspense story than horror, the implications of its ending are sincerely chilling.
“Witches” — Directed by Michelle Steffes, written by Katie Dodson. Originally released in 2014.
A coven of witches have had it up to here with each other, and their respective powers lead to one hell of a toil over their cauldron.
This one is pure fun, so much so that it even brings along its gag reel. The humor is Sam-Raimi-esque, and much of it plays like a twisted version of the dress changing color fight in Disney’s SLEEPING BEAUTY. Short, genuinely funny, thank you.
“Suddenly One Night” — Written & Directed by Arantxa Echevarría. Originally released in 2012.
Maria (Alicia Rubio) is ready to settle into a quiet night with her cat and some Christmas preparation when a neighbor in her building (Javier Godino) claims his apartment was broken into and the culprits are still inside. What follows is a nail-biting waiting game rife with paranoia and the devil’s timing.
I love a party that ends strong. Echevarría takes a scenario that many, many women can relate to: feeling obligated to be open, kind, and helpful to a stranger even when every intuition is telling you to keep them as far away from you as possible. While this entry has some great twists, the simple story ultimately works because of Rubio’s warmth and intelligence in her role and Godino’s ability to be equally plausible as a socially awkward neighbor or a man with a dark ulterior motive. All cylinders were firing this night, and fans of a nail-biting slow build shouldn’t miss this one.
Etheria’s second season is a satisfying and often remarkable buffet for short films devotees, and the variety and skill on display will easily pull in new fans. Even the few that didn’t work for me were interesting enough and technically excellent, but thankfully I got to indulge in what’s one of the most consistently entertaining horror collections I’ve seen in quite a while. Women have never been strangers to horror — we’re equal parts muse, object, victim, and victor in its fictional portrayals because, in real life, our relationship to fear is ceaselessly complex — and it borders on obscene that female creators have so often been othered in the genre. This collection from Etheria casts a warm but eerie glow in that darkness we constantly have to fight our way out of, and it’s as heartening as it is entertaining.
The second season of ETHERIA will be available September 24 on Amazon Prime in the United States and the U.K.
Tags: Etheria Film Festival, Horror, short films
No Comments