Category Archives: Short Film Reviews

Short Film Review: Final Gasp (2023) Duration 11 min 30 sec

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Short films are challenging because in almost no time you need to establish the world, the stakes, and make the audience care about what’s happening. Final Gasp seems to struggle a bit with some of these concepts as it tells the story of a young woman (Catarina Carvalho) who receives a mysterious package while alone in the apartment. From a storyline perspective all the necessary information is provided, but since other characters play such key roles in the story, it would have been more effective if we had actually seen them rather than only having them referred to or interacted with through text convos.

This is largely a one person show and Carvalho does a solid job working within the space she is given. The film is very competently shot (not a given for microbudget projects like this) and director David E. Teixeira does an effective job building tension and dread within a confined space. I also enjoy the otherworldly quality the film takes on at times and Teixeira economically uses camera angles, everyday objects, and a haunting score to great effect.

Unfortunately, it also succumbs to common screenwriting pitfalls such as characters making illogical and perplexing choices in service of moving the story forward, when it’s always scarier to see someone do everything right and still be put in danger. I mean, maybe instead of just using your phone as a flashlight, take two seconds and try calling the police. A bit of a mixed bag ultimately, but still a decent film that could have been a very good film had there been a more stringent evaluation of each story beat prior to shooting.

Availability: Unavailable

No release date as of review, follow David E. Teixeira on Twitter at @davidemmanuelt for further updates and info.

Short Film Review: White Willow (2017) Duration 2 min 40 sec

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Film is primarily a visual language and if you want to convey something to the audience in under three minutes then your visuals need to be on point and memorable. Such is the case with White Willow which deftly communicates a gruesome little story about self mutilation that won’t soon leave your mind. The film’s sole performer (Emily Lamberski) turns in a solid, compelling performance which is further enhanced by the excellent SFX work by makeup artist Jess Marie. Writer/director Ryan Swantek’s quick cuts and eerie ambiance create a jarring, unsettling experience while establishing a character who I would be happy to see more of in a feature or another short. A fun, nasty little piece that’s sure to get under your skin.

Availability: Widely Available

Full video can be watched on Ryan Swantek’s YouTube Channel.

Short Film Review: Kiddo (2022) Duration 14 min 57 sec

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Ambiguity in film is a difficult needle to thread, holding back just enough information to give the audience something to chew on afterwards without omitting key details required for supporting the action onscreen. In under fifteen minutes, Kiddo establishes a very intriguing world brought to life by excellent acting, a great visual style, and some nice moments of brutality. The sense of dread is palpable right from the beginning as we join middle-aged woman Kiddo (Lisa Howard) on a bus full of teens, all of them clad in matching pink jumpsuits. As the bus winds lazily through the bucolic countryside, it’s very clear that all is not right here and it might have something to do with the couple of rough-looking guys on the bus who aren’t dressed like the others.

I can’t go into more detail than that without getting into spoilers but suffice to say Kiddo has a very solid concept and executes it perfectly from a technical aspect. The only points where it falters slightly are a few moments of illogical character choices and some aspects of the world-building that don’t quite connect the dots. It’s still an incredibly accomplished piece of filmmaking and something that I would very much like to see expanded into a feature. This would provide more time to delve into the larger story and answer some of the burning questions about what is really going on to firmly solidify the reality of the world it created.

Availability: Upcoming Release

Film will be premiering on Alter on 12/29/22.

Short Film Review: The Blood of the Dinosaurs (2022) Duration 17 min 39 sec

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The Blood of the Dinosaurs is a strange, surreal experience that feels like the fever dream that would play through your head if you dropped acid after bingeing Mr. Rogers. The film opens with a fourth wall breaking convo between writer/director Joe Badon one of the actors (Tiffany Christy, credited as “Natural Mother”) who appears to sincerely be asking him, “what the hell is this movie about?” From there it moves on to the true beginning where a mixed media stop motion scene depicts the cataclysmic comet strike that ended the dinosaurs. After that we segue into the real meat of the film which focuses on Uncle Bobbo the dead-eyed lead of a children’s TV show who has a penchant for staring menacingly into the camera. Everything about the program feels more than a little off as Uncle Bobbo runs through his routine with the help of his young assistant Purity (Stella Creel). As Uncle Bobbo seems to be visibly struggling with mental health issues the world of the film plunges further and further into full-blown surreal territory.

Orgasms are overlaid with imagery of pumping oil derricks and ice cream, hard cuts to fake YouTube videos of DIY experiments, there’s a horrific birth, kaleidoscopic imagery assaults the viewer and so much more that all must really be seen to be comprehended. So, what the hell is it all about? That’s not an easy question to answer as the film is less about a conventional narrative structure and more about the visual exploration of themes and concepts such as reproduction, death, rebirth, and the cyclical nature of existence. Far from being a maddeningly obtuse series of images, The Blood of the Dinosaurs presents an intriguing surrealist expression of ideas with layers that benefit from close examination and interpretation.

Availability: Unavailable

No release date as of review, visit joebadon.com for further info.

Short Film Review: Sadistic Pleasures (2021) Duration 23 min

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As a site whose primary goal is to feature reviews of the most fucked up and grotesque films ever made, it’s long over due that the underground company A Baroque House (whose bread and butter is extremely graphic erotic horror shorts) had some representation. That’s not to say this is a review of the company’s varied output as a whole but since Sadistic Pleasures was a first time watch for me, it seemed a good one to start on for an unbiased and fresh take on the merits of that particular film.

It’s important to meet films on their own terms and understand the goal of a particular production to be able to assess how successful it is at achieving it. Since this film has about as much plot as early Guinea Pig entries, it’s not really fair to judge what is essentially just scenes of erotic titillation followed by graphic mutilation by conventional narrative standards. Instead, you must understand that this is down-n-dirty underground shock cinema meant to deliver a jolt to the more primal parts of your brain by delivering a taboo experience that you won’t be able to find on any conventional streaming service.

The film starts with a nameless young woman (Kaiia Eve) playing to the camera as she starts to put on a progressively more explicit show for the viewer. This continues for a little while until hands come into frame from an off-screen person (Leila Lewis) and things start to get a lot rougher, even escalating into a bit of cutting and knife play (simulated). The woman is soon drugged with a syringe full of a mysterious dark liquid and the real brutality begins.

Given the previously mentioned criteria, my main complaints center around areas that could have been tightened up to make the viewing a more cohesive and satisfying experience. The fact that the footage cuts between handheld POV and set-up shots is disorienting and makes it hard to establish where the characters are in time and space and what the viewers relationship to them is. The film would have been better served either leaning all the way into the handheld POV and framing the whole thing in more of a found footage context or visually distinguishing between the POV and the other shots so it doesn’t completely demolish the fourth wall when she looks right down the barrel of the camera.

It would have also been nice to have a little bit of dialogue to establish the context and maybe some interaction between the girl and the person behind the camera to make the situation she’s in a bit more clear. Regardless, the film has to be judged on what it does have and to that end there are some impressive visual elements that I want to call out. The scene that was particularity noteworthy was the image of the woman lying on the bed, brutalized and covered in bandages except where Eve’s real life tattoo of a demonic face on her lower belly remains perfectly framed by blood soaked gauze. Its a moment of horrific beauty and works excellently with the ominous sound design that accompanies it.

The FX here are also pretty on point, especially in a scene that features the best graphic breast cutting since The House that Jack Built, helped in large part by the attention to detail that went into making the prosthetic match Eve’s actual tattoos. So while Sadistic Pleasures may not have much to offer from a narrative or intellectual standpoint, it gets right down to business by delivering some edgy, uncensored content and at 23 minutes doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Availability: Moderately Available

Film is available for rental or purchase exclusively at http://www.abaroquehouse.com.

Short Film Review: Mirror Mirror (2021) Duration 10 min 52 sec.

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Mirror Mirror is a tight, 11 minute film that focuses on a man suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder (David Brown-King) as his personalities Anthony and Tony wrestle for control of his body. Brown-King is a one man show and does an excellent job carrying the entire film on his own, no easy task considering that the bulk of the movie is confined to a single, claustrophobic bathroom. Even within this limited space, writer/director Harmeet Singh Grewal does an effective job keeping the tension and audience engagement up thanks to compelling camera work and an ominous, foreboding soundtrack.

When dealing with the subject of mental health it can be difficult to walk the line of creating a heightened situation while not coming across as exploitative. I’m no mental health expert but from my perspective, the film did a solid job presenting the condition in its most extreme and dangerous form without crossing over into parody territory. The text at the end re-enforces the fact that the short was made with the intention of bringing awareness to the situation and those afflicted by it rather than using it as a cheap tactic to elicit drama. That’s not to say it’s without entertainment value though, as Mirror Mirror delivers its message with a healthy dose of psychological horror and dread.

Availability: Moderately Available

Film can be viewed in its entirety for free on Vimeo https://vimeo.com/577752191.

Short Film Review: Last Orders (2021) Duration 21 min

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Regardless of the length, a good film should hook you right from the start, and what better way to do that than an intriguing premise that establishes a mystery that you can’t wait to get to the bottom of. Last Orders does just this with a bartender (Alastair Parker), a gunman, and a mysterious man named Samael (Steven Elder) who knows far more than he’s letting on. The story is brought to life by the excellent, realistic performances from the leads and exquisite, professional production values that make the world feel truly lived in. Throughout most of the runtime it seemed as though Last Orders was on track to hit it out of the park but film is akin to gymnastics in that the flourishes don’t mean much if you can’t stick the landing.

I’m not saying that the incredible amount of talent on display is fully negated by an unsatisfying ending, but it does diminish the overall experience. It’s unfortunate to see such a well made film fall into the same trap that so many other movies (and to a greater extent TV shows) fall into by setting up an amazing premise that it isn’t able to fully deliver on. The film puts forward some very interesting ideas and while I can see where writer/director Jon James Smith was trying to go with it, the pieces simply don’t fit together to get it there. What I’d really like to see is a re-cut version that connects the dots and lets this become the great film it was meant to be.

Availability: Unavailable

No release date as of review, visit http://www.jonjamessmith.com for updates and further information.

Short Film Review: L.U.N.A. (2021) Duration 10 min

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Call me old-school but the idea of an A.I servant sitting idle and listening to your every word never sat well with me and I won’t have Alexa, Google Nest, or any of that weird, Big Brother shit in my house. While that no doubt sounds ridiculous to some, I’m clearly not the only one who has felt disquieted by the ubiquitous self-imposed surveillance of our modern world as films like L.U.N.A. deal with this very specific technological anxiety.

In the world of the film, the Alexa surrogate is called L.U.N.A and is a pyramid shaped device that technicians like Lilian (Fernanda Romero) spend a lot of time making house calls to repair. When she is summoned to the creepy old mansion that young couple Jamie and Sarah Cambell (Lauren Bair and Lauren Deshane) recently moved into she soon finds that this is far from an ordinary call.

Even more than the horror elements of this story the strangest thing about this reality is the reliability of the devices themselves. Apparently (according to the film) they break down so frequently and in such great quantity that technicians such as Lillian have to work from 6 in the morning till well after dark just to try and keep up with what must be an unfathomable amount of malfunctioning units. Given that the repair call itself seems to take less than five minutes, the surrounding community must be absolutely lousy with broken L.U.N.As that must be serviced in-person at all hours, from the break of dawn to the dead of night.

It’s just strange that a film that is so careful to logically justify so many aspects of the world would leave such an odd detail hanging. If the L.U.N.As themselves were built into the house or at least larger than a decorative paperweight, then there would have been more justification for Lillian’s job. Despite how much time I’m spending focusing on this particular aspect of the story, what’s most important is how well the overall components of the production work.

To that end, it’s an incredibly well-realized vision that wears its Giallo influences proudly on it’s sleeve (or in Sarah’s case, directly on her Inferno shirt). The creative camerawork, bold stylistic choices, pulsating synth score, and genuine tension all work in concert to deliver a very polished experience. In the end I was left wanting more, which was partly to the credit of the engaging story and partly because the abrupt ending was slightly unsatisfying. While the story did build effectively to its conclusion, it felt a bit more like the opening scene of a feature than a stand-alone short. Regardless, it’s a very well-made and entertaining piece of cinema and if it was to be expanded to a feature length production I’d happily line up to see it.

Availability: Unavailable

No release date as of review, visit http://www.blakevaz.com for updates and further information.

Short Film Review: The Visitor (2021) Duration 6 min 40 sec

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Coming in at a scant six minutes and forty seconds, The Visitor packs a lot into its short runtime. The story follows an unnamed writer who leaves behind his wife for the weekend to go to their country house and finish his book but encounters something very strange upon his arrival. One thing that immediately pops out about this film is director Mark Palgy’s choice to overlay a pulsating score over the entire runtime in place of any sound effects or audible dialogue. It’s a bold choice, especially since there is a significant amount of dialogue in the film which is instead conveyed through subtitles. This unconventional decision could have easily gone south, but in this case it works wonderfully and imbues the short with a life and energy that complements the visuals.

The 70s-style grain works well to contribute to the subtly surreal quality of the film which sometimes gives way to fully psychedelic imagery and bold color palettes reminiscent of Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy. The only minor gripe I have is that it briefly plays into a convention I see entirely too much where a character experiences something that would be utterly mind-shattering but regards it with little more than a mild incredulity. Still, this is an excellent film with high production values in every aspect from the aerial shots and the production company logos to the special effects and the camera work. It very much succeeds as a stand-alone short but could also definitely be expanded into a feature that brings the simple yet chilling story to a global scale.

Availability: Upcoming Release

Film is scheduled for release on 10/29/21 and you can visit https://www.thevisitorfilm.me/ for further information.

Short Film Review: Sleep Tight (2019) Duration 8 min

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Horror and comedy so often go hand-in-hand but the key to executing the combination effectively is to ensure that its not just the jokes that land but the scares, too. Sleep Tight portrays a scenario that will no doubt strike a familiar chord with parents of adolescents as a father tries to get his teen son to turn off his video games and go to sleep. The tone is light but there is an inherent truth to the interaction as the father comes to grips with his maturing son, who in turn takes every opportunity to petulantly age-shame his father. When the horror does come, it’s the real deal and writer/director Lewis Taylor does a great job of not only building tension but also following through with well-crafted costume and effects.

There is a great sense of life and movement in the camerawork which is important, especially when confined to a single, small location. The humor isn’t exactly laugh out loud but it mostly works and I appreciated the subtler touches such as the posters in the background for films like Slenderman 2: The Slendering. The only part that really sticks out as a strange inconsistency is a particular shot involving the Necronomicon that feels bizarrely out of place in the world of the story and seems to be little more than a throw-away joke made at the expense of maintaining a cohesive reality. While it may not be perfect, Sleep Tight is still a fun, well-shot film that delivers on the horror and a damn fine way to spend eight minutes.

Availability: Upcoming Release

Film will be available to watch on YouTube on the Omeleto Horror channel starting 09/16/21.