Fantasia never fails to serve us genre film lovers with a gamut of shorts. There’s literally always something for everybody, whether you’re into just a weird, unsettling drama, perhaps an oddball thriller, or you love it more extreme, whether that’s science fiction or horror or something else entirely experimental. If you enjoy genre films, no matter the genre and your personal tastes, Fantasia is a place to find a short you’ll adore. Sometimes Fantasia even serves up a short one year, then that same film winds up becoming a feature that comes back to Fantasia later (see Deanna Milligan’s delightfully strange Lucid).
The following capsule reviews are only SOME of my favourite shorts that appeared at Fantasia 2025—believe me, if I had more time, I’d write about another dozen incredible shorts from this year’s lineup.
First Rites
Directed by Findlay Ironside
Screenplay by Ironside & Aidan Lesser
Starring Vanessa Gonzalez-Egan, Erin Mick, & Matt Vince.
Horror
★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Findlay Ironside’s First Rites is the brief, gothic tale of Martha (Vanessa Gonzalez-Egan), a young woman searching for answers about the afterlife. Most people who want to know about death might read a book, or scour the internet for opinions; not Martha. She’s looking for her answers in a long dead corpse (Erin Mick). Question is, will she find them?
“Let the spirit find the body
through the veil between life & death.”
The early bits of First Rites almost feel like they’re setting us up for a story about a young woman being bothered by a nosy delivery man, then Ironside slowly shows us that Martha’s up to something strange behind her front door and doesn’t want anybody peeking too closely. Once we see what Martha’s actually doing, the short quickly pivots into the Gothic. Both Gonzalez-Egan and Mick are great in their roles; the former feeling desperate and determined in one breath, the latter appropriately confused and terrified after being resurrected. First Rites is proper Gothic since Martha is clearly obsessed with, as well as likely terrified by, death to the point she not only leans into ritual magic in search of answers about it, she goes straight to the source: a corpse that looks like it was buried in the Victorian era—at the very least, the Edwardian era—judging by the clothes she was buried in; if that ain’t Gothic, I don’t know what is anymore.
Beauty Sleep
Directed & Written by Jasmine De Silva
Starring Emma James, Jes Hynes, Abi McLoughlin, Eleanor Thorndyke, Ebony Aboagye, Cecile Krasnik, & Insia Durrani.
Comedy / Horror
★★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)
The deviously satirical short Beauty Sleep, directed and written by Jasmine De Silva, takes on the commodification of beauty at the extreme, following a mortician called Sandy (Emma James) who’s no longer happy with her work since she’s forced to do “living embalmments” on young girls for their Sweet Sixteen birthday parties. Regardless of Sandy’s happiness or unhappiness, she soon has to level up her creativity after one of the young girls ends up actually dead, not simply artisanally dead, on the funeral home table.
“Own your new body from
as little as $99.99 a month.”
De Silva’s film is a pitch dark comedy with elements of body horror. It skewers not just how society has commodified every aspect of the body, especially women’s bodies, but also humanity’s obsession with beautifying and sterilising death so as to avoid the very human reality that our bodies decay, even if only through aesthetic means. An early line of dialogue, describing the funeral home’s new services in plastic surgery, reveals the gruesomeness of capitalism, as a commercial-like voice explains that they recycle “off–cuts from breasts and bottoms donated from the personal collections of some apparently very influential people” and how, essentially, your new tits or Brazilian butt lift could consist of discarded flesh from your fav celeb—yasss, queen! Later, young girls clamour for “the sexy dead princess experience” at their Sweet Sixteen, which is a party-turned-funeral/funeral home viewing of a beautified young ‘corpse.’ The entirety of Beauty Sleep is hilarious, yet so dark and disturbing at the same time. De Silva strikes all the right notes, balancing satire and horror in equal measure. Beauty Sleep is one of the best takedowns of capitalist beauty culture in genre film to date.
Loser
Directed & Written by Colleen McGuinness
Starring Angourie Rice, Kathleen McNenny, Erika Henningsen, Benjamin Papac, Joelle Schwedland, Eric Cheung, Vera Briseño, Ada Bland, & Andrew Block.
Comedy / Drama
★★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)
Colleen McGuinness’s Loser is a dark and simultaneously kind of uplifting short centred on Alice (Angourie Rice), a fro-yo shop employee who experiences the most significant day of her life at work. Alice is twenty-two and feels like she’s wasted most of her life. She spends a lot of her time not at work being too anxious about the state of the world to get a good night’s rest. She compares herself to everyone else, from her beautiful co-worker to her married with kids sister. Worst of all, Alice’s mother died a couple years ago; she was Alice’s only true friend in the world. One day when a regular customer walks into the fro-yo shop, he changes everyone’s life forever, and it might just give Alice a whole new perspective.
“I had a great time in high school,
but my older sister said that
people who loved high school
grow up to be losers.”
The title of the short, Loser, isn’t a judgement on Alice, it’s reflective of Alice’s own depressed opinion of herself. I don’t want to ruin the ending, so let’s just say that Alice may have a chance to change and turn things around; however, even if she doesn’t get the chance, she realises that the courage to change is within her, partly driven by the memory of her mother. A great strand running through McGuinness’s short involves Alice’s hair and, at the end, she makes a gesture for her mother in an effort to show she hasn’t given up on life. Loser has a lot of impact in a short time. It’s a brilliant example of how depression and hope can co-exist in one profound package.
Headcase
Directed by Spencer Zimmerman
Screenplay by Zimmerman & Pat Moonie
Starring Siobhan Connors, Pat Moonie, & Gigi Saul Guerrero.
Comedy / Horror
★★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Spencer Zimmerman’s Headcase follows a wannabe influencer (Siobhan Connors), aptly called Karen when her real name is Kylie, as she works on content creation but runs into a pretty big snag after she hits and kills a man with her car. Instead of doing the right thing and reporting the death, she leaves the man’s corpse so she can make it to a dinner meeting her agent arranged. Things go haywire once Kylie decides to use the dead man’s decapitated head for a prop in a new video because that’s when the head starts talking to her. One thing leads to another and soon she’s falling for the head. Ah, if only life were so simple, right?
“I am somebody!”
Headcase is a perfect title since it plays on words by referring to both the decapitated head and Kylie’s clearly disturbed headspace. The short is deranged in the best way possible. Kylie’s twisted brain is on display early after she begins to use the head for a prop; that’s all bad enough, then we see great satire of influencer culture when Kylie hypes herself up fake crying for the camera before hitting record. The real irony is the dead head coming to life juxtaposed with Kylie, a living person who’s dead inside.
We also see Kylie’s total unwillingness to pay attention to her mental health when she meets with a woman pushing “AI therapy agents” and calls mental health “all that psycho stuff.” The greatest moment is the ending, after a twist reveals just how far gone Kylie has actually become. We’re also privy to a glimpse of how desperately she longs to be somebody in the public eye. In a deeply unsettling way, Kylie attains the celebrity she’s craved so long, as a semi-comic, semi-disturbing smile seals Headspace with both a chuckle and a shudder.
Long Pork
Directed & Written by Iris Dukatt
Starring Lena Headey, Marc Menchaca, Lorna Courtney, & Catherine Curtin.
Horror
★★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
There’s perhaps no film, short or feature length, at Fantasia 2025 more political than Iris Dukatt’s Long Pork. The story picks up in a post-Roe v. Wade repeal America in which “theocracy reigns.” We see posters reading: “Protect the child, forfeit the vessel in holy righteousness.” A well-known butcher and chef (Lena Headey) runs a restaurant where the meat is all killed then prepared in-house. One evening, she’s host to a politician (Marc Menchaca) and his wife (Zoe Cipres). The politician is a Bible-thumping misogynist who sees women as mere vessels for children, no matter the bodily cost, even death. He has no idea that there’s going to be a very special meal prepared for him tonight.
“Testosterone toughens the meat.”
Long Pork is openly, bravely political. Dukatt tackles misogyny in America with such a horrific little tale, confronting religious-led legislation concerning pregnant bodies with a nasty bite. There’s a head-on confrontation of transphobia, too. In one scene, a pregnant trans man working in the chef’s kitchen is misgendered by the asshole politician, who actually lays hands on the man’s stomach and prays for the child within to make it “through the plights of this demon womb.” We further discover trans people are basically considered illegal in this America; the politician slyly chastises the chef for harbouring a “fugitive to the law.” At this point in the U.S., sadly none of this actually feels far fetched anymore.
Every single piece of Long Pork is the prong of an angry fork stabbing away at America’s increasingly religious misogyny and right-wing gender politics. The final scene would be stunning and horrifying no matter what, though Headey’s acting, and a sweet moment amongst the horror, gives it more weight. Dukatt’s film is an artistic spit in the face of MAGA—one big, bloody loogie of bottled up rage against men who’d rather viciously sacrifice women, as well as trans people, upon the altar of patriarchy and Christian nationalism than give them any real autonomy.
Grandma is Thirsty
Directed & Written by Kris Carr
Starring Jessie Johnson, Harris Kiiza, Dean Kilbey, Harrison Little, & Matt Swift.
Horror
★★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)
Grandma is Thirsty, directed and written by Kris Carr, is a unique little slice of horror that, like a couple of other shorts here, manages a wonderful balancing act between terror and sweetness. Carr’s short focuses on a young Black boy being bullied before running into two white ginger kids with strangely old voices who claim they can offer help by taking him back to their house to meet Grandma. The boy goes with the two siblings, hoping for a way out of the bullying. The longer he spends at their family home, the more he sees something very strange is going on, particularly with Grandma.
There’s much to love about Grandma is Thirsty and it’s a creepy treat: there’s the eerie siblings with their old people voices, there’s the odd and monotone father, then there’s Grandma, who sleeps until midnight, probably due to the fact she’s “600 years old.” And this is really only the tip of the iceberg because Grandma delivers on the promise her grandchildren made, except it’s in the strangest, most unexpected way possible. When you reach the end of Grandma is Thirsty, you get a dose of terror with a chaser of sweetness because most people will probably never be able to guess where the short is ultimately headed. Carr’s film is something special; a unique gothic horror based in the body—and soul?—in a fairy tale-like wrapper. How terribly delicious.
Barlebas
Directed by Malu Janssen
Starring Pitou Nicolaes
Drama / Horror
★★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Malu Janssen’s Barlebas is up there as one of the more intriguing Fantasia 2025 shorts since it plays slightly with the form and content of what might otherwise be a standard drama about the persecution of witches during the late 16th-century in the Dutch South. Janssen’s short has been classified as part musical, part period drama, part folk horror, focusing on Heylken (Pitou Nicolaes), a woman who feels her neighbours are turning against her while the community tries to flush out, or rather burn out, supposed witches. Heylken’s proved right when she’s accused of witchcraft alongside a couple other local women.
“Did he have a cold phallus?”
Barlebas is the most powerful short film I saw during Fantasia 2025. Heylken’s voice becomes a tribute to the power of women’s voices. The power of women in general is on display throughout Janssen’s short, even in brief moments. During one scene, Heylken prays to “good Saint Bree.” This is likely a reference to Saint Brigid, the mother saint of Ireland who’s also associated with the pagan goddess Brigid from Celtic mythology. Heylken potentially even lives near the village of Noorbeek, where Saint Brigid was venerated even in the 1500s.
Then there’s the power of women displayed through Heylken and the other women with whom she’s accused of witchcraft before being sentenced to a dark fate. They sing in spite of men shouting “Silence!” at them. Most significantly, we witness the power of Heylken and the other women as it reflects upon a young girl in the community. As fires burn in the distance, the little girl begins to hum Heylken and the other women’s resistance song. She makes a decision to seek freedom rather than conform to what her small-minded village demands of her. Barlebas is a confident song shouted at the world to celebrate the power of women who stick to their beliefs, even in the face of men’s horror, and how their power is, in the most perfect way, deeply contagious.
Father Son Holy Gore 