The short film Purge (2026) poses an interesting question, if at first a broad one: what makes us who we are? It then sees the question through in a sharply focused, often brutal manner, invoking aspects of body horror and, arguably, some modern Gothic elements. Honestly, it feels very much like a filmmaker-specific fever dream, […]
In amongst recent press emails, The Caller (2025) stood out for one key reason: it’s a film made by one person (Andy Blithe). What that means here is: one person acts, and the same person makes up all of the crew, too. An interesting fact and no doubt an important project personally, then, but fortunately […]
Director Lucía Forner Segarra has a run of titles under her belt which are named for their female protagonists. Marta (2018) concerns a woman who aspires to be a serial killer; Dana (2020) tackles the discomfiting subjects of rape/revenge and (lacklustre) justice; completing this trilogy, her most recent short Berta (2024) takes us once again […]
Much is made in supernatural horror of what is seen or unseen, but so much of what scares us is down to what we hear – or think we hear. Using that idea, Last Words (2023) is an effective short film which, although it tantalises several ideas regarding the source of its horror, is ultimately […]
Working in any kind of public-facing role is a test of one’s patience and mettle, and the food industry has to rank highly on any objective or subjective measures of tedium, ick or just downright stress – and that’s just when it comes to the customers. Let us not underestimate one’s co-workers, as it is […]
Whilst it’s usual to get screeners for feature-length projects arriving in the site inbox, it’s less usual to get screeners for short films, so it was great to hear from the UK-based Sketchbook Pictures a couple of weeks ago: Sketchbook has (thus far anyway) exclusively worked in short film – a medium which Warped Perspective […]
It’s been discussed elsewhere on the site how, via successive lockdowns and the increasing role of social media, the latter has gone from steadily moving into horror cinema to hitting it at some pace. That being said, Filtered (2021) manages something a little different by taking a social media element which is usually trite and […]
Office parties. Not even once, in an ideal world. But, the thing is, sometimes they’re unavoidable, if you want to get on in your career – that seems to be the case with the unnamed protagonist of Why Haven’t They Fixed the Cameras Yet? Using an internal monologue, she ruminates over an evening that would […]
The first character we meet in We Die Alone is Aidan (Baker Chase Powell); he’s preparing for a date, and he’s nervous – so nervous that he is practising the same line, over and over. We never see him get to the restaurant; his nerves are so bad that he stands the girl up, receiving […]
Short films are fun because they often make for statements of intent: whilst good short films do more than simply act as calling cards, it’s still true that the best of these show something, in terms of style and theme, of what could follow. This is certainly the case with Mr. Clean (2020), an economical […]