[REVIEW] BITS22: Dark Visions Shorts Collection
Making a short film is a task that is not only built on the competency and skills of its filmmakers, but also on their ability to navigate the hurdles posed by the elaborate nature of filmmaking itself, both creatively and financially. The filmmakers featured in Blood in The Snow Film Festival’s Dark Vision programming block often wear multiple hats by writing, directing, and producing their horror shorts. This batch of filmmakers innovate despite the odds of micro-budget, indie filmmaking, yet their approaches differ significantly, giving the block an entertaining variety of films.
Gone from director Randy Daudlin deviates from traditional kidnapping stories, as housewife Amber-Lynn is swiped from a grocery store, only to be much more than her kidnapper expected as the housewife’s odd behavior and strange lack of fear allude to the sinister justification for her kidnapping.Inside from directors Alex Chung & Giulio Calisse reimagineskidnapping tropes as well but instead utilizes the horror of the body swap film as a stalker gains total control of his victim when he wakes up in the woman’s body. This frightening short relies on the abilities of its actors in place of elaborate effects to create a tense thriller; though at times, the short’s use of voiceover causes a slight muddling of the short’s overallnarrative story.
While Inside and Gone succeed in part due to the simplicity of their plots, other featured shorts such as The Undertaker and Regalo try larger, more complex narratives. The Undertaker tells the story of a Russian funeral parlor, the strange man who runs it, and the night where everything went wrong in just over thirteen minutes. While the sheer scope of the film’s story felt a tad too large for a short film, The Undertaker remains engaging by juxtaposing spooky storytelling with the film’s signature paper-craft style animation. Regalo tackles the uncomfortableexperience of becoming reacquainted with a relative you haven’t seen in a long time. Teenager Euree quickly picks up on her Tita Perla’s strange behavior after the long-lost relative comes for a visit. Meanwhile, Euree’s father alludes to Filipino folklore of shape-shifting creatures, which we quickly can use to explain Tita Perla’s behavior but does slightly hinder the tension-building in the piece due to the addition of this expository beat.Both films, despite their narrative ambition, are excellent snapshots of what could be promised by a feature adaptation of the source material.
The wide variety of horror shorts featured in this programming block is the clear result of an equally diverse slate of filmmakers and their respective talents. First Blood from director Olivia Loccisano blends coming-of-age tropes with body horror as a teenager experiences her first period, alongside a series of bizarre side effects. While the film’s plot is relatively straight forward, I was particularly impressed by the care this film took with the technical craft, featuring strong direction, cinematography, and production design that resulted in a film that’s equally beautiful as it is horrifying. Diaspora from director Tyler Mckenzie Evans is my favorite from the program block, as it successfully executes short-form social horror. Evans successfully ratchets up the tension as Melina, a Black woman living in a historically Black suburb, watches her friends and family replaced by an encroaching wave of seemingly clueless white people, only for this speculative take on gentrification to become even more horrifying as Melina investigates further.
With an excellent batch of short films under their belts, the filmmakers featured in this programming block have a promising future going onwards with their unique, diverse perspectives and technical prowess a clear indicator of theirpotential within the horror genre.