The Chinese short film Fish Eye (2015) is a suspenseful, elegant-looking thriller that provides a good deal of mystery and tension in its 13-minute running time (before ending credits). Director Tong Zhou creates an atmosphere of paranoia and dread that builds to a gripping climax. Shasha (Yuti Sun) is a young woman who has moved […]
Opening with close-up shots that make routines of regular female grooming seem much more squirm-inducing than usual, director Jeanne Jo’s horror-comedy short film Tampoon (U.S., 2015) goes on to provide more visuals likely to make viewers both groan and laugh uncomfortably, sometimes at the same moment. Jo has made a fun film that features a […]
Horror-heavy Scream Queen FilmFest Tokyo (SQFFT) is dedicated to showcasing and promoting feature-length and short-film genre works by women filmmakers from around the world. The 2016 edition kicks off on October 22 at Uplink Factory and runs through October 28. SQFFT director Mai Nakanishi has selected an outstanding lineup of offerings for this year’s festival. […]
You can speculate about what to expect from Australian director Lucy Gouldthorpe’s short film Grillz from its title and its tagline “Online dating sucks, literally.” If you guessed a horror comedy with a main character who is a certain type of creature of the night, you would be correct. The film offers some clever […]
Writer/director Natalie James’s Tritch is a meditative, slow-burn ghost drama that goes for a more reflective, haunting feeling than for sheer dread and fright. The result is an impressive debut short that offers equal parts pathos and eeriness. This Australian short film, set in Shanghai and presented in the Mandarin language, tells the tale of […]
For this special edition of Horror News Radio, foreign correspondent Joseph Perry (South Korea) joins Doc Rotten to discuss SQFFT, a horror film festival Joseph recently attended in Nagoya, Japan. The festival is unique in a variety of ways, from the films it presents, to the filmmakers behind them, to the venue itself. Joseph dives […]
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Australian short chiller Pink does a splendid job of providing viewers with a thought-provoking, well-told, and wonderfully acted tale that leaves much open to interpretation, in the best sense of the term. This is certainly no easy feat, but writer/director Lynne Vincent McCarthy handles the task splendidly. A young man named Leon (Brendan Donoghue) wakes […]
Horror films are often morality tales with timeless or current messages, and Barbara Stepansky’s thrilling science fiction/horror short Substance provides a few life lessons, including (1) always check the labels on medication bottles, (2) always answer the phone when your mother calls, and (3) if you spike someone’s drink, karma can come back to bite […]
Writer/director Kirsten Carthew’s science fiction/horror hybrid Fish Out of Water is a head-scratcher in the best sense of the term. It presents some mysteries and leaves our imaginations to fill in the gaps as it introduces viewers to a snowy, postapocalyptic wasteland and two of its facially scarred inhabitants. Soon after the film opens […]
Australian short film Little Lamb is a gothic thriller that takes place in a world that is bleak, both in the landscapes in which its protagonist Louisa is trapped and in her chances of improving her life – or even continuing it beyond her young age. Writer/director/editor Heidi Lee Douglas’s film is set in 1829 […]
Young Abigail Tate’s mother and father drop her off for her first day of daycare at a seemingly nice couple’s home, never suspecting what she will fall victim to there when sordid secrets are revealed in the Canadian horror/drama short The Last Bastard. The film slowly unravels its mysteries and builds to an impactful […]
Director’s Patricia Chica’s short horror film Serpent’s Lullaby is – like its main character – elegant, lovely, macabre, and filled with mystique. Like the great monster films of yesteryear, it shows the humanity within its tragic lead character and the anguish that even a soulless creature can harbor. Jenimay Walker stars as a mysterious […]
One of the most sensational horror cinema experiences I have had in many months was watching the seventies-set shocker Slut at the Scream Queen Filmfest Tokyo tour event in Nagoya, Japan, in February. What amazed me even more is that this short film is a debut for its writer/director, Chloe Okuno, because it has […]
Some folks feel that, when asked to do a favor, we should always make sure what it is first rather than being quick to say “Sure!” Director Izzy Lee’s darkly comic horror short A Favor offers a perfect example of why that philosophy is a wise one. As Jackson (Shaun Callaghan) settles in to watch […]