Making a short film is a feat of strength when it comes to artistry because you have to make a story compelling in a much more brief amount of time than with a feature, and knowing how to craft a succinct story’s not an easy task, not to mention actually shooting a short involves a whole lot of coordinated chaos and hard work from a bunch of different talented people in front of/behind the screen. That’s why at every film festival covered by Father Son Holy Gore there’s as much coverage as possible on short films; they deserve respect and love and EYES. Sometimes only a finite amount of people will ever see a short, unless nowadays it makes it onto YouTube; otherwise, you have to see these little gems at festivals when possible. In this spirit, here’s a list of my personal favourite shorts that played at Fogfest 2023.

(For transparency’s sake, I need to acknowledge that I was part of the programming team for Fogfest 2023 and also a member of the Awards Jury, too. All shorts that screened during Fogfest were on the program for a reason; this list is merely a sliver of the greatness that was featured this year and doesn’t reflect poorly on any that weren’t included.)

DISCLAIMER:
The following article contains SPOILERS!

Luna
Directed by Daniel M. Caneiro

★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)

Daniel M. Caneiro’s Luna—as in lunacy, the moon, and, well you can guess where this is headed—starts at an amusement park where a woman’s looking for her daughter, then devolves into unsettling territory as a worker from the park is revealed to be the one who’s kidnapped the girl. Unfortunately for the kidnapper, he doesn’t quite realise the girl is not who she initially seems. A-woooooo!

This short reminded me of the short story “Popsy” by Stephen King, which takes another classic horror movie monster (the vampire) and turns the concept on its head. Luna features a fantastic transformation scene, too. I’m on record as not being a big werewolf movie fan, yet, here are I am once more finding myself drawn to a new werewolf horror story. Bonus: it’s a wonderful touch to have “Le cygne” (a.k.a “The Swan”) from The Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns playing while Luna, in werewolf form, does her thing.

Diaspora
Directed by Tyler Mckenzie Evans

★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

In Diaspora, a Black couple, Melina (Cara Ricketts) and Daniel (Rainbow Sun Francks), start to notice that their fellow Black friends in the neighbourhood are disappearing and a lot more white people are moving into their houses. The Black-owned grocery store is suddenly no longer owned by a Black owner, populated nowadays by mostly white faces. One day, Melina comes home to see her own house is sold, there’s a white family already moved in having dinner, and what they’re eating is… a shock.

Tyler Mckenzie Evans did a fantastic job in Diaspora, as it represents the displacement of gentrification in Black neighbourhoods through horrific allegory. Everything builds up gradually until all the horror comes crashing down around the viewer by the end. It starts with a bit of slow recognition that something’s not quite right in Melina and Daniel’s neighbourhood. After that, Melina’s given water by a new white neighbour and nearly chokes on a gross, long hair in it. Finally, we see the white family eating their gruesome dinner, which is a nasty cherry on top of a creepy tale.

The Weaver
Directed by Øyvind Willumsen

★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)

“How nice to be visited by such… young blood.”

The Weaver begins with a care worker going to visit an old woman, which you’d think might be a pleasant scenario, except this is the horror genre, so the film goes from nice little visit to abject terror in the span of minutes. The care worker feels like things are more than slightly off with the old lady. He, and the audience, has no way to even begin comprehending how creepy and crawly the old woman will become.

Once The Weaver descends into the final minutes it makes the skin crawl. As the old woman reveals the truth to the care worker about her “children” there’s a shocking realisation of what’s really happening. The ending feels like the culmination of a fairy tale; fitting given that the old woman tries to fatten the care worker up like the witch from “Hansel and Gretel.” Horror twists are great when they swerve into flights of fantasy, so The Weaver is in fine form.

Taste
Directed by Lucy Rose

★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

Lucy Rose’s Taste takes place in the 1800s, as Jane (Cat White) is taken to a lavish home where her new husband Francis (Saeed Taji Farouky) lives, along with a maid called Maud (Kit Littlejohn). Jane is made aware of her brutal new conditions once she has to eat a piece of raw meat with a clump of hair in it for supper, then she’s raped in the night by her new husband. She uncovers horrific things in her husband’s house, and she simply cannot live with them, if she lives much longer.

There’s a Bluebeard quality to Taste, which Lucy Rose subverts in the end with the wife having her own tasty meal. It’s also significant that there are racial dynamics at play between Jane and Francis, giving a classic tale a new dimension considering the story’s set at some point in the 19th century. Taste tackles the abuses women faced in the 1800s and many they still experience in 2023. One line rings true even today, as many women are told, or expected, to not ‘make noise’ when bad things happen to them or the women around them: “Just be quiet and it‘ll be fine.” In response, Jane assures herself: “I will not go quietly.” Rose’s film is a powerful slice of horror cinema that understands how misogynistic abuse can drive a woman mad but likewise recognises the need for women who experience it to find justice, or, rather, for men to get their just desserts.

Pool Party
Directed by Ellie Stewart

★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)

Ellie Stewart’s Pool Party is a fun little film about a group of girls at one of the eponymous parties, where Freya (Glenn Dela-Cruz) isn’t feeling like part of the fun. Freya deals with the other girls’ bullshit for as long as possible until she decides it’s time to leave; this party’s over. Though her idea of ending the party may not be traditional.

Stewart does a good job of giving Pool Party a sort of dreamy vibe. You kind of expect that, at any moment, Freya might just wake up, that she’s only dreaming. That’s why when things start to break down wildly it’ll probably surprise some folks. More than anything, Stewart’s film evokes the feeling of being young and awkward and sensitive while other young people want to do nothing but poke and prod at you until you weep, or maybe snap. Freya certainly isn’t the type of girl you want to pick on. You’ll regret it.

Overtide
Directed by Jordan Barnes-Crouse

★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

I’ll spare a description of Overtide‘s plot since you need to experience it for anything I write here to properly make sense anyway. Jordan Barnes-Crouse’s short feels as if it were pulled from mythology or a dark corner of Celtic folklore passed down from generation to generation. It simultaneously feels like a horror story you could put on around Christmas season. Overtide is familiar in a way I can’t quite articulate yet it’s one-hundred percent, wholly unique. There’s a hooded figure with a large staff, an ancient creature in the woods, a man covered in barnacles and other sea growth, and plenty more. If you catch this at another festival somewhere, you’ll be lucky to lay eyes on it.

Vale
Directed by Kyle Brewis & Josh Klaassen

★★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

Vale is a mysterious and poignant story about an old man who seems to be at a crossroads in his life, looking back at all he’s given up and wondering what it was really all for in the end. We see the man living out of his camper van while wearing a shirt and tie and looking haggard. We see him on the phone being transported back to a moment in his past, listening to his daughter cry as she asks: “Why‘d you have to go, dad?” Later in the woods, the old man comes face-to-face with an inexplicable creature.

The poignancy of Vale is sharp; it stings, in the most perfect way. The ending is full of sadness yet there’s a beauty to it all, too. Kyle Brewis and Josh Klaassen fill their film with so much atmosphere that there doesn’t need to be a big, extensive plot. There’s enough story here lining the edges of the old man’s sadness to carry a whole feature film. In horror, there are so many obsessed people, men especially, who wind up ignoring their flesh and blood lives in favour of something they might never find, or something that’s not actually out there in the world. Vale looks at the consequences of such painful quests and their potential conclusions.

Fungus
Directed by Ryan Maddox

★★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

Ryan Maddox’s Fungus depicts a tenuous relationship between a man and the land. The man’s son gets taken by the forest fungus, who require a debt to be paid. There are terrifying fungal monsters living in the woods all around the man. So the father tries to barter with another fungus in a tree trunk, only to be told he must offer a very dear sacrifice: his own life. If not, he’ll never seen his son again. The man, of course, refuses. That’s when even more terrible fungal growths in the dark forest step into the light.

Fungus is my favourite short that played Fogfest this year, hands down. A great parable in the vein of ecological horror, as stated right on the film’s poster. It’s also just a gnarly horror short with so much passion put into the vision on screen, from the atmosphere to the effects work. Hard to deny the environmental message of Fungus, in that Maddox touches on the unwillingness of humans to accept what must be done in order to restore balance to the land, and that, perhaps, it will take a giant looming horror for us humans to realise how badly we’ve broken the pact between us and nature.

Every Time We Meet for Ice Cream Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes
Directed by Anthony Cousins

★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)

Every Time We Meet for Ice Cream Your Whole Fucking Face Explodes is a funny, silly, and sickly sweet tale of two child outcasts coming together in spite of any challenges they face. A boy who gets picked on pines for a girl with facial scars who other kids around school say has a “mad scientist” for a father and “an alien” for a mom. Not only that, the girl’s face explodes when she gets “too excited.” Yet in the end, the boy’s willing to endure whatever it takes, even risking his own face just to be with the girl. Anthony Cousins taps into childhood and early feelings of love with such a weird, fun little story that it’s nearly impossible not to be endeared to his film.

Gnomes
Directed by Ruwan Suresh Heggelman

★★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)

A woman goes jogging in Gnomes and winds up becoming part of the earth when she accidentally jogs into the path of a group of murderous gnomes. She’s first attracted by strange glowing mushrooms, but they lead her into gnome territory. And then it’s not long before we’re privy to how those glowy mushrooms sprout in the first place.

Ruwan Suresh Heggelman’s short is a brilliant reversal of the food chain from the real world on the level of fantasy: here, what’s little eats what’s big. People meat makes these magical mushrooms grow; no longer are the humans at the top of the hierarchy wielding all the power. There’s so much to love about Gnomes. Completely unhinged. Lots of interesting creatures and their gadgets to enjoy. We don’t always get to see an elaborately imagined ecosystem like the one in Gnomes, which is why this tiny horror movie deserves to be seen far and wide.

Smiley Face
Directed by Francois Ricard-Sheard

★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)

Not all smiling faces bring joy; some of them bring terror, even death.
In Francois Ricard-Sheard’s Smiley Face, a smile isn’t an invitation for anything good. The plot involves a few women who’ve had the misfortune of wandering into the path of an eerily human creature who’s got a taste for flesh. There isn’t much more plot to the film than that, and it doesn’t matter; this one’s a creeper.

Apart from Smiley Face‘s atmosphere of decay amidst a literal house of horrors, the short relies almost on the women’s acting and the actor’s performance of the humanoid creature (played by Jérémie Gariépy Ferland) combined with its grotesque look. We’ve seen recently in a film like Smile how the act of smiling can be subverted into something that’s not friendly, happy, or welcoming but instead something very disturbing. The same goes here, as the grotesque smile of the humanlike creature wears on the viewer until it might as well be a monstrous visage of anger and terror. Smiley Face proves that not everything in horror is about an elaborate story; sometimes a good scare is just a good scare.

Cereal
Directed by Shane R. Preston

★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)

“Dad lets me have cereal whenever I want!”
“Yeah, well your dad makes a lot of poor life choices.”

Cereal is the story of Chelsea (Trinity Kaylani Sieling), a little girl who loves to eat cereal. Mom (Shelby Handley) doesn’t want Chelsea to eat cereal, whereas Dad (Alex Petrovich) doesn’t have as many rules. Chelsea starts to really resent her mother, even drawing pictures that feature her and Dad on the couch together while Mom lies on the floor with a knife in her chest. A sign of horrifying things to come. Chelsea soon sees a message swirling in the milk of her cereal bowl: KILL.

Cereal starts to feel like a story about how Chelsea’s trying to secure her place with the parent who lets her do whatever she wants, then right at the end we start to see that Chelsea’s ready to kill indiscriminately if it means getting to eat cereal whenever she wants it. Shane R. Preston’s short feels like it has a spiritual connection to the anti-consumerism of Halloween III: Season of the Witch (and in this TED Talk, I will…). Cereal is absolutely a great film to watch around Halloween since Dad tells Chelsea that “Every day is Halloween in October,” but it’s good for any time of the year for those who enjoy slasher horror. Gives a whole new life to the serial/cereal killer pun.

Buzzkill
Directed by Peter Ahern

★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

Peter Ahern’s Buzzkill is about a new relationship that goes from bad to worse. After an initial date that goes well, Rick (Ahern) and Becky (Kelly McCormack) are ready to keep pushing things further. Back at Becky’s place, she frets over meeting up again but has no clue how weird things will get before the night’s over. She’s having trouble with a real buzzkill of a problem, something she’s trying to keep hidden from the world, but it’s about to come out.

Even as someone who’s not a lover of animated films, I’m in love with Buzzkill. It’s a gross, disturbing, and hilarious tale of relationship troubles, just not the everyday troubles most of us experience. Ahern’s dark wit is on display here in full force, and the short is all the better for it. For those who enjoy horror with a few laughs and equally macabre terrors, Buzzkill will hit the spot; there’s even a bit of Blondie to top things off.

Sleep Tight
Directed by Lisa Ovies

★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

Lisa Ovies’s Sleep Tight involves a little boy named Tyler (Azriel Dalman) trying to deal with his parents, Mark (Christian Sloan) and Stephanie (Andrea Ross), who are divorcing while he’s also suffering night terrors and visits from a man without a face. The kid goes to see a therapist, Dr. Ramirez (Gigi Saul Guerrero), yet nothing seems to help. Things in Tyler’s life take a much more brutal turn after his night terrors creep into the light of day.

Ovies was on-hand for Fogfest and during a panel discussion between her, Becca Kozak, and Andrea Subissati, she said: “Sometimes you just have to see the dude kill the woman.” She stressed that it has to be that way sometimes because this reflects a harsh, violent reality that women must face out in the world, every single day. Everything in the film reflects such real situations, compounded by the further involvement of a child. One scene where Stephanie and her angry, estranged husband argue over a drill perfectly reflects the dismissive, sexist attitudes men have towards women: “I can fix shit, too, Mark.” It’s chilling, then, how Ovies brings the drill back later, as we witness Tyler waking up to see his mother drilled into the wall like a piece of human wall art. The whole “Man with No Face” name feels like it parallels the family’s situation and represents the absentee father, whom we earlier see trying to assuage his own guilt about choosing work over his son by acting like it’s no big deal that it happens all the time. Even young Tyler appears in a shot that feels evocative of The Shining where Danny Torrance—a horror movie child caught between an abusive, alcoholic father and a traumatised mother—stares off into the distance and has horrific visions.
Ovies uses an air of the supernatural in her short to address the very real lived experiences of women. Sleep Tight is a smart and disturbing horror allegory about the abuse women face in relationships. It’s just as much a film about how that abuse goes on to affect children, especially little boys who see their fathers treat their mothers in terrible ways which can all too often negatively dictate the rest of their lives and how they go on to treat women, to.