Director A.J. Briones’ short film “The Smiling Man” is a beautifully terrifying and demented short horror film that’s centered on building terror and then delivering one of the most warped final scenes I’ve ever seen in a horror film. The whole basis around the premise of “The Smiling Man” is not so much the inevitability of doom, but how we perceive evil and how evil can perceive good.
It’s not enough to just make a horror movie. Most times horror movies have to have mood, and tone, and aesthetic, and pacing. Some of the greatest horror movies have a distinctive style all their own and are helped by their cinematographer. Director Jed Hart’s “Daddy’s Girl” is a very good and very creepy short film, and his short is improved ten fold by the amazing cinematography by Craig Dean Devine. Continue reading
Director and Writer Sean Meehan’s drama is so well written and original I wouldn’t have minded watching three hours of the story of character Cori working her way through her unusual career. Cori Sweeney is an aspiring actress who works for the private company Total Performance. Personally hired, she works with clients to help them learn how to argue and deal with conflict that typically involves firings, and individuals breaking up with their significant others.
“Dirty Books” is really one of those short films that could have benefitted from a longer format, or at least twenty more minutes of story. On its own, it’s a pretty solid drama comedy about a young students’ last grasp to instill some sense of relevance and popularity in his soon to be defunct school newspaper. Noah Bailey plays David, a young reporter who is called in to his principal’s office to discuss the inevitable death of the school newspaper.
Alan Holly’s “Coda” is a remarkable and beautiful animated masterpiece. It’s rumination on the beauty of life and how senseless it can be. But Holly also observes that the beauty of life can be in how senseless and unpredictable it tends to be. Surely, people die for no reason, especially good people, but there’s a lot of amazing things that happen without prediction either. Often times some of the best moments of our lives happened spontaneously like fireworks from the darkness.
I really like where director Steve Rudzinski’s head is with “The Survivors.” I love the idea of a movie about the survivors of slashers and serial killers teaming up to bring down random slashers around the country. The war of good and evil materializes in to a wicked concept where the slashers have the tables turned on them, resulting in the slashers forming their own cabal where they murder people in various towns around the world. Director Rudzinski pokes fun at the horror genre and team movies in general, offering some fun and funny satire of horror icons above and beyond.
A few weeks ago, at MoPA in San Diego, a group of filmmakers working under the production banner of 2AM Burrito and their friends gathered to screen their most recent shorts. It was an evening with red carpet and cast and crew in attendance. Without further ado, here is what I thought of each short presented.