Nu (2022) [Film Maudit 2.0]

I imagine Olivier Labonté Lemoyne’s is going to lend itself to all kinds of interpretations. Maybe it’s just abstract for the sake of being abstract? Who knows? In either case, “Nu” succeeds in being as oddly creepy as it does in being kind of silly, exploring the idea of fear vulnerability. The whole concept of beings that look like nudists plays on the whole nature of voyeurism and the reluctance by many to engage in it.

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Txotxongiloa (2022) [Film Maudit 2.0]

Director and Writer Sonia Estévez’s short stop motion film is a beautiful depiction of the life span of the normal woman and how she perceives their existence as a whole. The idea of the normal woman being depicted as some one living on strings is a fascinating bit of symbolism. Over the course of ten minutes, the animation depicts her as someone being held up by strings who seeks independence almost immediately.

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Not Him (2023)

Director/Writer Sarah Young commits to what is a great horror thriller that many fans will likely connect with big time. “Not Him” is a tense and anxiety ridden horror thriller that works very well in mixing in horror with what too many have experienced in their lifetime. I was very much enamored with how many themes and the sense of ambiguity that Writer/Director Sarah Young is able to integrate through to the very end.

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Hide Your Crazy (2023)

Director Austin Kase’s short horror romance is a premise teeming with feature potential. I could have literally watched two hours of this back and forth between the two characters stuck in this tragic romance. “Hide Your Crazy” is a film very much in the vein of “My Demon Lover” channeling a lot of that late 1980’s camp and genre mixing amounting to some top tier entertainment all around.

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The Spider (2023)

Andy Chen’s “The Spider” could be appreciated as a multiverse interpretation where the story of Spider-Man is not about a superhero but a body horror tragedy. “The Spider” is basically “Spider-Man” as told by David Cronenberg and takes all the basics of Peter Parker’s tale and transforms it in to a gruesome genre hybrid. With the excellent prosthetics and make up from Alen Stubbs, he and Chandler Riggs help to realize a slick and entertaining take on Spider-Man that is pitch black in tone.

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The Red Ball (2022)

George Morgan’s “The Red Ball” reminded me a lot of “If Anything Happens, I Love You.” It’s a powerful animated short about grief, pain, and attempting to start over after a horrible loss that’s shaken up someone’s innocence. In this instance, George Morgan focuses on a family’s efforts to move on and find some kind of restart despite the lingering pain of their former lives.

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