As the next Killer Shorts Competition opens for entries, many folks may not be sure about what they’ve written, what they’re going to write, or even where to begin. And if a little inspiration is all you need, then look no further than the 2021 Etheria Film Night short horror film fest now streaming on Shudder through July 25.
The Etheria Film Night features nine short horror films all directed by women with the intent to give them the exposure they deserve in an industry that will tremendously benefit from their talents.
The nine selections total around two hours run time and run the gamut of horror subgenres. From horror comedy to nightmare fuel, any short horror writer is sure to find inspiration and a little nudge in the right direction no matter what kind of horror short you’re writing.
This week, we’re highlighting the first four shorts from the 2021 Etheria Film Night to give you a taste of what to expect, with more to follow very soon.
The Fourth Wall ★★★ 1/2
Written and directed by Kelsey Bollig
We’ve all been a part of some group project where you feel like you’re the only one pulling your weight. What usually happens is everyone gets handed out an A+ like they were an audience member at a taping of the Oprah show. And there’s hardly any group project that relies as much on teamwork for success as theatre. That’s theatre with an RE at the end of it.
It’s Chloé’s (Lizzie Brocheré) time to take the stage in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and she becomes quickly frustrated when interrupted while tearfully and reflectively searching her motivation in her dressing room—“What is beauty?”. Or is she just doing coke and fucking around like everyone else and so caught up in her own intense world that her fellow thespians banging in the next room and the American actress who refuses to speak French, are simply driving her from zero to eye gouging level rage in no time flat? And the result? An audience that teeters on indifference for our flawed company of players, that is until the eye-gouging starts.
For most of this film, the audience attending the play is a pretty tough if not tepid crowd, and it’s not until Chloé’s violent reaction to her castmates’ inability to take things seriously, that anyone beyond the fourth wall becomes interested. The last line of the film is a man in the audience saying to the woman next to him, “Now things are getting interesting.” The question is if they even know what they’ve witnessed is real. For that matter, do we even know it was real? And just like that, we’re never really sure if Chloé’s nosebleeds and bad temper are due to the implied cocaine or her castmate’s bad acting like she says it is.
If we follow this logic all the way to the tip top of Hollywood, does any of it really register with anyone? And if it does, does it even come across the way it’s supposed to? Now that’s scary.
Making The Fourth Wall literally became a matter of life and death for writer-director Kelsey Bollig after she was hit by a car while scouting locations for the film in Paris, France. Resigned to failure, Bollig thought the production was doomed as she spent three months recuperating. But unlike Chloé’s situation, Bollig’s cast and crew were determined to make sure the film was a success. And in a place where she didn’t know the people or language, Bollig put her faith in a gang of folks who knew the importance of teamwork in the realm of theater. In this case, theater with an ER at the end of it (and in the middle, if you will—yikes!).
Narrow ★★★★
Written and directed by Anna Chazelle
You remember being a kid and how intense a game of The Floor is Lava could get? Before you knew it, Mom was chasing you down, forcing you into imaginary pits of fiery hell just so she could concentrate enough to feed you, get you to do your homework, and keep you from breaking your neck.
Okay, so maybe Sloane (Anna Chazelle) isn’t dealing with quite as a benevolent creature as Mom, but as she follows a narrow, foot-wide trail in a post-apocalyptic world where distractions run amok outside her path, we know some foreboding force is keeping her focused on wherever she believes she’s going. And the way Sloane coldly ignores the shrieking calls for help from a woman lying injured in the desert tells us everything we need to know about the kind of danger that lies beyond should she wander from the tiny trail.
After failing to score a can of food where her path dead-ends in an abandoned house, and after being followed from outside the trail by a gang of creeps who glare at her like she’s just murdered a puppy, Sloane encounters an ex-lover who says he can take her to their missing daughter. If I say much more, I’ll give the whole thing away, but the chilling finale that shows us how these narrow trails appear to begin with will have you reassessing your whole life. The Floor is Lava is always a fun game until someone gets hurt.
In the modern blockbuster era, filmmakers tend to forget that that film is a visual medium and we’re constantly beat over the head with so much explanation and dialogue that we’re often dumber for having seen Transformers 8. Writer-director and star of Narrow Anna Chazelle brilliantly, and chillingly gives this film an almost silent treatment, cleverly tapping into whatever our individual fears may be lest we stray from the straight and narrow.
You Will Never Be Back ★★★★
Written and directed by Mónica Mateo
This film gets into David Lynch territory, which is one of my favorite areas of horror because the only thing that’s really there to scare you is a weird nightmarish sense of inexplicable dread. You never really know when a nightmare begins and you don’t know when it’s going to end, and before you know it, you’re very content to be unraveled from the inside out. You Will Never Be Back does the same thing.
Ana and David (Ximena Vera and Chumo Mata) are saying goodnight to each other in an apartment building that looks like some lost wing of the Overlook Hotel. They briefly discuss their imminent move from the building and as Ana exits down the very long, nauseating hallway, lights start flickering, and we begin our descent into the Lynchian horror subgenre. We know it’s about to get weird because anytime some shiny blue object shows up in a David Lynch film, whatever is on the other side of it usually turns everything that came before it on its head and you’re left more confused about whatever you thought you believed in first place. And all this is typically compounded by familiarity that is suddenly unfamiliar.
The next thing we know, Ana is staring head on into a glowing, blue, electric orb floating in the middle of the corridor that is never explained, but I assure you has nothing to do with the kind of fabric softener she’s using and everything to do with this building being in the same zip code of existential dread as Twin Peaks and Inland Empire.
Well, of course Ana sticks her finger in the glowing, static orb, and just when you think things couldn’t get weirder, she encounters a beaten up, half-naked version of herself. When she runs back to see David, he’s grown a beard, he’s dressed differently, and standing next to him is his pregnant wife that isn’t her.
The horror here isn’t so much the resolution as it is the journey along the way, which is how you rate the success of soul-rattling nightmares. Writer-director Mónica Mateo lands triumphantly in the ranks alongside David Lynch with panic attack inducing strobe effects, claustrophobia, overweight men giving chase with a wheezy collapse, grinning mentally ill neighbors who unintentionally give you the creeps, and of course doppelgängers. And it’s all wrapped up in electric blue light that tells us we’re not in Kansas anymore and maybe we never were to begin with.
Bootstrapped ★★★
Written and directed by Katy Erin
A word of advice, and it probably goes without saying, but the next time you travel from the future to tell your significant other that they’re essential to saving the human race, it’s best to leave out a few of the uncomfortable details you know about that they don’t. There might be knowledge in science, but there’s wisdom in silence.
In Bootstrapped, this is precisely the predicament Ally and Naomi (Katy Erin and Gabriela Ortega) find themselves in when Ally appears to Naomi from the future to tell her she’s found a way to travel through time. As if this wasn’t mind-blowing enough for Naomi, Ally also warns her of the apocalyptic future that awaits and tasks her with being the only person who can prevent imminent annihilation. My lawyer told me one time that there are secrets and then there’s confidentiality; Ally’s problem is she doesn’t know the difference and lets slip top secret relationship intel which is most likely what leads to armageddon in the first place.
Writer-director Katy Erin does low-budget relationship horror comedy that defies everything the mumblecore crowd wishes this description could be. Armed with a couple of iPhones, an ex’s apartment, and less than a hundred bucks, Erin makes the rest of us look like slackers who have nothing but endless volumes of excuses to show world why we haven’t made our smartphone movies yet.
So often being clever tends to be a one-time use resolution and it truly takes something extra special for a clever idea to stand the test of time. Extrapolate Erin’s film into just about any situation where you’re about to open your big fat mouth and you’ll revisit the dreaded consequences that Ally and Naomi experienced. So watch your mouth or it could not only end your world but everyone else’s.
The 2021 Etheria Film Night is currently streaming on Shudder through July 25.
