Season 3 of Killer Shorts unveiled a new opportunity to budding screenwriters, offering the $5 one-page screenplay entry. That’s right, for $5 you can enter your one-page script for a chance to win some amazing prizes, such as $500 cash, increased rank on Covefly’s The Red List, Final Draft Screenwriting Software, to name a few.
And as we all know, in screenwriting, typically one page equals one minute of screen time, which brings us to the Nyx Horror Collective’s 13 Minutes of Horror currently streaming on Shudder. The festival is produced by the talented Melody Cooper, Kelly Krause, Lisa Kröger, and Mo Moshaty.
The Nyx Horror Collective “is a community of diverse woman-identifying horror creators, inclusive of BIWOC, LGBTQ+ women, disabled women, and non-binary folx.” Their mission is to celebrate and elevate original women-led horror content.
The goddess Nyx was mother to many other deities such as Erebus, Thanatos, and Hypnos and is said to be feared by Zeus himself. So accordingly, the Nyx Horror Collective puts female filmmakers and creators at the forefront providing an outlet for them to explore their innermost struggles and challenges, and share them through genre storytelling.
The Collective’s inaugural theme for this year’s festival is folklore, which includes everything from original stories to fresh takes on existing folk tales.
So if you think a one-page script is impossible or if a classic case of writer’s block has got you down, take a look at these amazing shorts, and see how much punch you can really pack into a one-minute film.
Fell Ends
The only thing worse than being followed through the woods at night by a Dominican demon is being followed by a Dominican demon with backward feet. Writer, director Eunice Levis cracks the myth of La Ciguapa in this first short in the Nyx Horror Collective’s 13 Minutes of Horror. Legend has it, La Ciguapa’s inverted feet are to make its footsteps hard to follow so you never know where you’ll run into Dominican death.
But spooky Caribbean mythology isn’t enough to stop young Sierra (Zariel Woodbine) from cutting through the woods on her way to a friend’s house one night. The story efficiently told via text messages between Sierra and her friends warns her not to cut through the woods lest she die by the hands of La Ciguapa (Lydia Azondekon). Of course, Sierra isn’t a believer until she hears something lurking in the distance.
Simple and moody, Levis gives us the creeps with a great reveal at the end after Mom calls and derails Sierra’s plans.
★★★
Bloody Mary
If you thought this was going to be about Queen Mary I or drowning in Tabasco sauce, you are sadly mistaken. Writer/directors Michaela Barton and Kelly Macarthur have such sights to show you as they anthropomorphize the menstural cycle. I’ve also heard it called Aunt Flo, but the suggestion of a crumudgeonedy distant relative stopping in for a few days doesn’t exactly incite the same sense of terror as a raging, tyrannical monarch or spicy cocktail.
At any rate what Barton and Macarthur accomplish with zero dialogue is the three to five to seven-day horror women experience on a very personal level, once a month for several years of their lives, complete with more and more blood, and with cramps in second billing as Bloody Mary herself.
★★★
Stay
We’re given just the right amount of info in this short that it’s confusing enough to be classified in the rarest of subgenres: the one-minute Giallo. With no dialogue, writer/directors Sylvia Douglas, Corrine Simpson, and Greg de Jong set us up with a nice moody scene of an older woman standing before a mirror as an apparition appears in the mirror behind her.
Next, this same woman is dancing with a younger woman giving us the impression that they’re lovers. Then the younger woman is before the mirror by herself and also sees the apparition. Except instead of responding with fear like the first woman, the younger woman appears to heed something the apparition is suggesting. And from what I can gather based on the next scene, the apparition has convinced the younger woman to murder the older woman.
I’m not exactly sure of the implications here, but the beauty of it is that it’s almost entirely left up to the viewer to interpret. Sure, it could be one lover murdering another at the behest of an unclean spirit. Or it could go into a deeper allegory with a comment on ageism.
So while there aren’t any black-gloved killers hacking away at supermodels, and there is a pretty major suggestion of the supernatural, the mystery at hand evokes a giallo vibe, so I’m gonna go with that.
Creepy and bleak is the name of the game here, with most of the points going towards mood.
★★ 1/2
The Foley Artist
Aside from Brian de Palma’s Blow Out or Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation, I’m hard pressed to think of anything else that gets close to the rare subgenre of Foley Horror. And whatever you think Foley Horror should be, well, this is where filmmakers The Also Sisters (Sonia and Miriam Albert-Sobrino) come in and subvert your expectations David Lynch-style.
After a few attempts of trying to record her scream over a film, our foley artist in question (Elizabeth Lowe) moves on to record the sounds of her footsteps through leaves, and only then does she hear far off scream. And yes, it’s what you think it probably is, and yes, it’s that weird, which is what I love the most about this short.
Film projector with a strobing effect, muffled screams, and weird people in weirder places.
★★★★
Silvanus Park
Last year director Rob Savage made a movie called Host where we have the horrific pleasure of witnessing a demon possession unfold over a Zoom call amidst a global pandemic. Pretty scary, right? And for a solid year I’ve been saying to myself, if we can do a Zoom horror when are we gonna get a Snapchat horror? Well, lo and behold, here comes director L.E. Hall to deliver the goods. And with only a single minute at her disposal, Hall executes the most terrifying, shortest found footage film probably in the world.
I like to say that I’m not a huge fan of the found-footage horror subgenre, but anytime I actually watch a found footage horror, I’m adequately terrified. And Silvanus Park is no different. Well, in fact, it’s even better because delightful, bubbly Megan sets out to look for a creepy cabin in Silvanus Park that she’s heard about while posting perky captioned pics on Snapchat along the way, totally setting us off guard. That is until she finds the cabin. Even then, she goes exploring the spooky structure with bouncy, cheerful spirit. Pretty soon the disturbing writing is on the wall, literally and figuratively, and even though Megan may not know quite yet, you and I can clearly see that this is probably going to wind up in Blair Witch territory.
Pound for pound, this short is punching above its class and winning the fight, with the lowest of budgets, simplest plot, and delivering the best chills of the entire 13 Minutes of Horror event.
★★★★
911 Call
Who doesn’t love a classic ghost story? You know the kind where they’re already in the house. Or the kind where they’ve been dead for two years and they’re already in the house.
Writer/director Gioia Jiles gets in and gets out with a quick reveal that tells you there’s more to the relationship with her deceased husband than perhaps was suggested by the happy Bride Tribe photo that begins the film.
★★★
Tailypo
The one thing you can say about Bigfoot is that he pretty much leaves people alone. But other woodland cryptids like Tailypo, are more hellbent and bloodthirsty for revenge. So when you and your dogs go off hunting for food, try not to upset any hellhounds in their natural setting, lest ye be relentlessly stalked and become food yourself.
Writer, director, and animator Megan Llewellyn retells the classic folklore of Tailypo through poem and animation, regaling us with her own version of the mysterious woodland beast whose tail was taken by a hunter and his three dogs. In Llewellyn’s adaptation, Tailypo eats the hunter’s dogs and promises forgiveness if the hunter returns its tail. The catch is, the hunter has already eaten Tailypo’s tail, so there’s really only inevitable death for him by way of feral Appalacian hellhound
Llewellyn’s haunting animation evokes a prize-winning storybook vibe and is laced with just enough mystery and surprising authority to give us the spookies and keep us coming back to be sure that we understand what we’re hearing.
★★★★
Mending Fences
Little Emma (Emma Sinclair) thinks Momma is just tired, overworked, and cranky, but Momma has a darker secret that’s tied to something in the earth.
Writer/director Shelley Gustavson takes a swing, if you will, at a demon possession connected to a haunted post that has been moved by the neighbors and all hell is about to break “up and out.” But don’t let Momma fool you, she knows her way around witchcraft as she prepares her daughters for the grisly conclusion to this haunting short.
If this film suffers from any one thing, it’s a whole lot of story inside of a one-minute plot. Gustavson gives us a disturbing scenario that begs to be made into a feature-length film.
★★ 1/2
Zenith
The thing about being in a cult is if you’re in one, you’re usually the last one to know it. And that’s the real trick with wellness retreats, isn’t it? Is it a wellness retreat or is it cult? You may not know until someone whips out a branding iron, and by then it’s probably too late.
These are the questions asked by filmmakers Chloe Cole, Sabina Friedman-Seitz, and Anna Miles in their film Zenith. Retreat founder Cassandra (Sabina Friedman-Seitz) lists off all the rejuvenating activities promised by Zenith that are sure to make a new you, a la late-night infomercial. But as if pulled from the headlines—and if you know, you know—not only does Zenith offer inner peace and perfection, but you’ll also find branding, self-flagellation, and “exfoliating until you are nothing,” among other healing methods to help you become the best version of yourself.
This is another brilliant execution of the age-old tactic of making you feel nice and cozy and then slowly oozing the rug out from under you to reveal a living hell that, at this point, you can’t escape. Gives me the wim-wams every time.
★★★★
The Bystander
We have lots to thank social media for. Not only do we now live in a world of medical experts and political scholars who just a few years ago were better known as that weird guy from work and the lady who you try to avoid on the way to the mailbox, but we’re also witness to people who witness horrible things and just allow them to happen.
And while social media isn’t part of what drives Kristine Gerolaga’s The Bystander, one can’t help but think of its influence as we see a man (Steven Krimmel) witness a female being assaulted and chooses to do nothing about it. This is where The Bystander (Kristine Gerolaga) comes in.
Fast-forward two years later, and the man is being forced to watch a video of himself doing nothing to stop the assault he witnessed that fateful night, over and over and over. The nightmare for this fellow is there is nothing he can do to escape his punishment. And none other than The Bystander is seeing to this man’s fitting destiny.
Witnessing an assault and doing nothing to stop it is scary enough especially for whoever is being assaulted. The rest of us get to be doubly disturbed with the infinitely unsettling eyeless, eyelid-laden apparition that is The Bystander who quite literally bystands the bystanders who choose not to help.
Bravo, Kristine for giving me the willies with this one. I’m ready for The Bystander 2 where people who don’t wear masks during a pandemic are vexed with foggy glasses and forced to smell their own bad breath.
★★★★
Not Bloody Mary
This film sounds like it could be a sequel or a prequel or have some connection to another film in this festival, but it’s actually a quirky take on the old Bloody Mary myth. You know, the kind where you turn out the lights in the bathroom and say “Bloody Mary” three times into a darkened mirror. The legend goes that if all is rightly spooky, the ghost of Bloody Mary will appear when you turn on the lights.
Anyway, in this case, writer, director Larissa Zageris delivers this legend with a dry humorous energy in the spirit of an episode of Seinfeld. As Jennifer (Jennifer Vance) is showing James (James Dolbeare) her new place, she regales him with a story about a woman who’d had an affair with a doctor who impregnated her and left her, so she killed herself in Jennifer’s bathroom a hundred years ago. James exclaims she’s got a Bloody Mary case on her hands and takes it upon himself to rid her bathroom of the curse. The twist happens quick, so I’ll save it for you to discover on your own.
A cute, quirky spin on a classic folk legend. Keep ‘em comin’, Larissa!
★★★
Hereafter
As if a cemetery wasn’t creepy enough to begin with, when you go attaching some lore to it like, “if you stop to look at even one grave, no one will see you alive ever again,” well, then you probably straighten up and pay attention, and maybe heed the warning, unless you’re a weirdo who likes stalking young girls.
And this is precisely what’s happened in Devi Bhaduri and Robbie Barnes’ Hereafter, as a man (James Gappy Burney) pursues a young woman (Julia Boudiab) through a graveyard only to wind up with a surprise case of claustrophobia if you know what I mean.
The sense of danger is palpable without even being told exactly what’s happening, and we get a nice decrepit treat at the end that puts a lid on the whole thing.
★★★★
How To Kill An Aswang
Vampires, werewolves, witches, ghouls, and any other Filipino nightmare-fueled entity that falls into the aswang category are all easy foes for writer/director Sapphire Sandalo. But problems of a more domestic nature is where Sandalo struggles for absolution.
Shot in a series of black and white close-ups, Sandalo’s story is told through poetry as she faces off against a silhouetted adversary that isn’t revealed until the film’s gut-wrenching final frames.
A powerful revelation that will hit close to home for many.
★★★
The Nyx Horror Collective’s 13 Minutes of Horror is streaming on Shudder until September 13.
Nyx Horror Collective on Twitter.
Nyx Horror Collective on Instagram.
Killer Shorts actively promotes diverse voices. If you are female-identifying, a Person of Color, non-binary, or LGBTQ+ please email us at [email protected], or DM us on Twitter, for a discount code to submit your scripts.
