Regular readers of the Killer Shorts Blog may recall the two-part review of the acclaimed Etheria Film Night film festival of shorts we covered here on Killer Shorts back in the summer of 2021. Etheria’s mission is to showcase the talents of female-identifying filmmakers. These shorts are featured on Shudder for a short time during the Etheria Film Night event, and recently Etheria has shown up as a series on the horror streamer. The first season of the Etheria series compiles selections from the 2014 festival, so if your short was selected for this competition, you might find it among the episodes of the Etheria series one day down the road.
The first short of the series is the mystery-thriller with disturbing implications 12/15/1996 from writer/director Mae Catt.
12/15/1996 Review
No matter how many times we see it, there’s an unrivaled intensity to two guys driving through the desert where one of them is covered in blood, screaming at the other, that frames anything they say from this point on as believable, especially if it doesn’t make much sense. This is the blow across the jaw writer/director Mae Catt coldcocks us within her 2011 short 12/15/1996.
We learn pretty quickly Adam (Adam Cardon) and Quentin (Frederick Stuart) have obviously killed someone, and of course, it didn’t go as planned. It never does! And now devil-may-care Adam is talking his pal Quentin down from a high-speed come-apart with a plan that involves getting rid of the evidence redneck style: feeding the pigs.
What makes this very 90s direct-to-video Tarantino knockoff scenario not quite so Tarantino knockoff is the strange relationship between Adam and Quentin and “everyone at the house,” and someone named Sam who is gonna be “fucking pissed,” and that they “will be in deep shit,” along with a few other telling pieces of dialogue that allude to exclusive isolation that makes me believe they live in a serial killer commune.
It’s not long before we find out exactly who is in the trunk of that Town Car these guys are riding around in, but the devastating effect it has tells a much stranger and even more disturbing story about what’s really going on. And the fact that this information comes as a shock to one of our characters is more than a little confusing—I mean, didn’t they just kill this person? The point here is that denial ain’t just a river in Egypt, it can also be a deeply troubling psychological disorder to the tune of completely blacking out when you’re hacking someone to pieces.
It’s pretty obvious that as a general rule these two knuckleheads have a hard time keeping it together on a daily basis. I’m no psychologist, but you could drive a Lincoln Town Car between these guys’ Briggs Myers scores. The story may not make much sense, but the chemistry and intensity between Adam and Quentin make me believe that it makes sense to them, so I’m along for the ride.
Anyway, don’t spend too much time trying to analyze the weird friendship between Adam and Quentin—there’s clearly more to this situation than we’re being told. In fact, after doing a bit of research, I found out this short is the third part of a trilogy—both of which use dates for titles:7/28/1989 and 12/14/1996—that develops this odd relationship, and I’m not sure why it alone was chosen for the Etheria anthology series currently streaming on Shudder. We’re only told just enough to be curious, if not a little baffled, and if it weren’t for the pesky cop who pulls them over in the beginning and addresses both characters, I’d swear this thing could be an existential profile of a serial killer and his internal monologue, devil-over-the-shoulder style.
About the Filmmaker
Other than protests against Slobodan Milosevic entering their 26th day in the city of Belgrade, a threat to the US from Ayatollah Khameinei, the unsolved mystery of TWA Flight 800, and the death of Gerald Moverley, the first Bishop of the Diocese of Hallam in Yorkshire, I can’t seem to find any particular contextual significance for the date of December 15, 1996. However, it is the date of a ski lift accident in Switzerland, and it seems pretty fishy to me that Catt worked as an assistant to the composer on the 2010 Adam Green thriller Frozen, where three skiers are involved in a Sophie’s Choice scenario on, you guessed it, a broken down ski lift. Coincidence, or should I just let it go?
These days, Catt’s credit can be found among the writers of several animated series including Young Justice, Spider-Man, and two Transformers shows. Catt is also a featured writer on the upcoming Dungeons and Dragons campaign-based animated Amazon Prime series Critical Role: The Legend of Vox Machina.
To find out more about Mae Catt and what she contemplates in her spare time, check out her website for all the info.
Final Thoughts
As far as 12/15/1996 is concerned, if lots of plot details and rules and explanations are what you need for kicks, I don’t want to hear about it, because the name of the game here is the thrill of the panic and being dropped in the middle of a world that is very aware of its weight whether you are or not. It wants to emotionally and mentally push you around, and my advice is to let it rip.
★★★
Quarterfinalists to be announced February 14, 2022.
