Elijah Rodriguez’s Closing Day is a compact 4-minute horror that runs just long enough to (gratifyingly) unsettle its audience. In those brief minutes, it props up the memory of terror as a living force animating the dead. Like the Lady of the Lake in The Haunting of Bly Manor, the ghost (Laurel Brower) of Closing… Continue reading Closing Day: Sorrow, Unsettling Malevolence, and the Desecrated Home
Category: Reviews
Strangers: A Happy Little Rom-Com
James Fink-Jensen’s Strangers is a 7-minute comedy of awkwardness following a blind date between two people and a hall monitor part timing as affectionate mother. There’s also a disgruntled barista (Grace Dewhurst) thrown in, because tired retail service workers are the unacknowledged backbone of comedies about goofy protagonists. Two university students meet on a blind… Continue reading Strangers: A Happy Little Rom-Com
Bad Chemistry: Bad Breakups and Worse Parents in Slasher Horror
Michael Rognlie and EE Tallent’s Bad Chemistry is a 20-minute slasher-Get Out lovechild. The story of a breakup that gets much worse than either party planned or expected, it follows Sara through the travails of the fateful night and the days after in a guest invitation from hell. Of all the plot events, the breakup… Continue reading Bad Chemistry: Bad Breakups and Worse Parents in Slasher Horror
Homeless: Putrid Relationships, Newfound Friendships, and A Lovely Dog Caught in Between
Rikhil Bahadur’s Homeless, co-written with Shachi Sharma, is a personal film that combines the experience of the pandemic with their experience of a new country. Following an unwanted dog who eventually experiences abandonment and then a contented kind of homelessness, the 18-minute film ends by being a modest little feel-good story. Linda (Evelyn Tran) and… Continue reading Homeless: Putrid Relationships, Newfound Friendships, and A Lovely Dog Caught in Between
Enter the Room: An Apartment in Lieu of a Family
Harry Waldman’s Enter the Room is a psychological horror where a man’s neurotic, borderline manic dictatorship over his apartment is only the tip of the iceberg. Not triggered so much as it is intensified by the arrival of his brother, Brian’s loss of control seems to defy logic and chronology, existing as a continuous and… Continue reading Enter the Room: An Apartment in Lieu of a Family
Liquor Bank: Misery Hates No-Nonsense Company in Alcoholism Drama
Marcellus Cox’s Liquor Bank is a tense drama about a young ex-Marine’s relapse into alcoholism a hair’s breadth away from his one-year mark of sobriety. An unlikeable character, it is his distaste for the pain of living that both makes him identifiable and renders him a bit too obstinate at times. Like Nadia Vulvokov once… Continue reading Liquor Bank: Misery Hates No-Nonsense Company in Alcoholism Drama
Curtain Call: A Single Take Production Drama That Knows Why It’s There
Harrison Winter Altmann’s Curtain Call, co-written with Imogen Fennessey, is a single take comedy about a narcissist’s ego taking hit after hit where he was instead hoping for a boost. A once-famous actor now doing community theatre, Grant sees everyone in the crew as beings beneath him, waiting for crumbs of his aura and genius… Continue reading Curtain Call: A Single Take Production Drama That Knows Why It’s There
NEX-IS-US: Profoundly Sorrowful Teen Ensemble Drama
Kevyn Tapia’s bold and surprising NEX-IS-US is a 35-minute drama with three interlinked narratives unfolding over the course of a day. It is a remarkably well written film, especially for a young filmmaker, even if it sometimes drops the ball. Featuring five teenagers and the adults on their periphery, the non-linear narrative makes the pieces… Continue reading NEX-IS-US: Profoundly Sorrowful Teen Ensemble Drama
All Dogs Go to Heaven: Dystopian Sci-Fi About A Very Convenient Chip
Sebastian C. Santisteban’s All Dogs Go to Heaven, written by Gian Bonacchi, Neal Ludevig, Sergio Sanchez, and Daniel Moreno Skurve, tells the story of a dystopian, totally distant future with no connection to our own world whatsoever, ruled by the powers of a chip called Unneurolink. Totally different, completely unconnected, zero allusions. Much of the… Continue reading All Dogs Go to Heaven: Dystopian Sci-Fi About A Very Convenient Chip
Abigail: A Powerhouse Performance in Drama About End of Life and Heartbreak
Max Hechtman and Christonikos Tsalikis’s Abigail, written by Jason K. Allen, Max Hechtman, and Meryl Hechtman, is a view into the swirling, disorienting mass of grief that has woven itself into the life of an aged man without his wife. Instead of a chronological order, the structure sandwiches the good days within the bad to… Continue reading Abigail: A Powerhouse Performance in Drama About End of Life and Heartbreak