[CFF 22 Review] WTF Shorts: Every Time We Meet For Ice Cream Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes
“Young love can be explosive”
Based on the novel Every Time We Meet at the Dairy Queen, Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes by Carlton Mellick III. The book follows the story of teenage love interests who go on dates to Dairy Queen. Every time they go, the teenage girl gets so overwhelmed with happiness that her face explodes, spraying blood, gore, and meat all over Ethan and others at the ice cream shoppe.
The film won the audience award ‘Best Midnight Short Film’ at The Florida Film Festival 2022 and it’s honestly no surprise. The film boasts fantastic storytelling, gory and gooey special effects and a heartwarming message all within it’s incredibly short run-time. Director Anthony Cousins, well known for his cinematography work in the 2019 Shudder exclusive anthology Scare Package entry The Night He Came Back Again! Part IV: The Final Kill, has creatively put together a fast-paced and quirky love story. The backdrop is a beautiful pink and neon ice cream parlour that sets off the splatter of face explosions on soft vanilla ice cream cones.
The short follows lonely high schooler Ethan who falls for the “weird” girl who suffers from random face combustion. The kids at school warn Ethan that her dad is a mad scientist and her mum is an alien, but that doesn’t deter Ethan from asking her to be his girlfriend. The short itself focuses on the relationship between Ethan and his unnamed love interest who are in the burgeoning stages of their love. Arden Michalec and Logan Schuneman work incredibly well together in depicting an awkward and endearing pair of teenagers while simultaneously sharing the message of love and acceptance.
Despite the gore and the spiders in her hair, Every Time We Meet for Ice Cream Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes is a cute short that shows the importance of acceptance and loving people for who they are. This short is endearing, odd, and full of incredible blood and face explosions that make the 7 minutes and 6 seconds enjoyable and heartwarming.
Every Time We Meet for Ice Cream Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes is screening at Chattanooga Film Festival until June 28.
