DISCLAIMER:
The following reviews
contain SPOILERS!

Stop Dead (2023)
Directed by Emily Greenwood
Screenplay by David Scullion
Starring Priya Blackburn, David Ricardo-Pearce, Sarah Soetaert, & James Swanton.

8 minutes

★★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)

Stop Dead is a story about a couple cops stopped on an isolated road when they see a young woman in shambles shuffling out of the darkness. The young woman refuses to stop, but the cops insist they try to help. This certainly doesn’t do the lady any favours because once she stops she’s found, and dispatched, by an unseen entity that only has one rule: you stop moving, you die. An awful man, or thing, is lurking in the dark out there. If only cops were keen on superstitions and the supernatural rather than solely pure factual evidence; they never really stood a chance.

Something about Stop Dead brings to mind urban legends or creepypastas today. I found myself thinking of The Smiling Man story, which was made it into a terrifying short called 2AM: The Smiling Man. The way the creepy man, billed in the credits as The Still Man (played by James Swanton), skitters into view when somebody stops is just… haunting. For my money, Stop Dead belongs in the pantheon of genuinely contemporary scary stories alongside The Smiling Man, Slenderman, and others like them.

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Leech (2023)
Directed & Written by George Coley
Starring Joshua Katembela, Sandra Voe, & Graham O’Mara.

10 minutes

★★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

The harrowing reality of Leech is sure to stick to any viewer’s soul. George Coley’s Leech is about an old woman called Mary (Sandra Voe), whose personal care attendant Callum (Joshua Katembela) comes by to make sure she’s doing okay when he stumbles onto a horrific secret. Mary’s not altogether there mentally anymore. She tells Callum it’s as if her late husband is still in the house with her. That’s because there is someone in the house, but it’s not Mary’s husband, and they’re not looking after Mary’s meals or doing the cleaning, either; they’re up to something quite sinister.

“Sometimes I think he’s still here, in the house.”
“Well then, not alone after all.”

Leech deals with two sides of a coin: those who care for the elderly and those who seek to take advantage of old, defenceless people. Callum represents those who care and want to genuinely help versus the strange, ‘the leech,’ who is using the old woman for her home, for the comfort whatever money she has left provides. What’s so effective, and eerie, about Leech is the way that Coley starts us off in the house, seeing the strange man living with Mary, and it begins to lead the audience in a certain direction; it makes us curious what sort of twisted life these two are leading. Then the short pulls a fast one on us, pivoting into something far more twisted. Leech is uncomfortable in the right ways and doesn’t overstay its welcome, leaving the viewer to stew in their own disturbed thoughts after all is revealed.

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Mosquito Lady (2023)
Directed & Written by Kristine Gerolaga
Starring Hanna Lorica & Maria Lingbanan

13 minutes

★★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

There’s both sadness and terror in Kristine Gerolaga’s Mosquito Lady, a short film about a young woman named Gemma (Hanna Lorica) who’s pregnant and trying to find a way out but realises she has to have her parents’ permission to get an abortion. She’s told about “the Mosquito Lady” down the street; a living urban legend connected to older Philippine folklore (the Manananggal) about a woman who supposedly sucks the children right out of pregnant women and ruins lives. When Gemma sees no other way out she goes to visit the Mosquito Lady’s house, and her life is turned upside down.

Gerolaga’s short focuses on how abortion is perceived in Philippine culture, as well as the fallout involved when women aren’t able to access safe, legal abortions. The Manananggal of Philippine folk tales becomes a figure that takes the illegal abortion doctor’s place. We hear rumours that the Mosquito Lady previously aborted Gemma’s cousin’s baby: “She used her long tongue to suck the baby right out of her womb.” There’s also suggestion that Gemma’s mother tried to abort her and it was botched, given the scar on her mother’s stomach. Right from the beginning, Gerolaga focuses on religion as a cause for everything awful that follows, as we start the short with pregnant Gemma praying to a (previously covered) crucifix on the wall, and then the crucifix falls off, breaking, revealing blood inside; at least that’s how Gemma envisions it. Mosquito Lady is definitely Nightmare Fuel, as the block it showed in at the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival suggests. A fantastic horror allegory, through the prism of Philippine folklore, about the consequences of religious control.

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Alicia (2023)
Directed by Tony Morales
Screenplay by Tony Morales & Fer Zaragoza
Starring Naia de las Heras, Ana del Arco, & Vieja.

5 minutes

★★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

The greatness of Alicia is that director Tony Morales and co-writer Fer Zaragoza know exactly how long to hang around. A mother (Ana del Arco) is dealing with her young daughter (Naia de las Heras) who’s recently gone blind. Not an easy thing for anyone to deal with, let alone a little girl. The girl is insistent she’s being bothered by an old woman creeping around her room. While the mother attempts to help her daughter, she eventually has to come face-to-face with what’s scaring her girl.

Alicia builds and builds quickly until a final reveal/jump scare that is SO VERY worth it. The scare is wonderfully devious, and infinitely pauseworthy for those who may eventually catch this one at home. I found the last image of Alicia has stuck with me for days upon days; truly makes the skin crawl and the brain meat recoil.