Shitting a Penis (2026)
Directed by Sam Morgan
★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
The wildly named Shitting a Penis hit Toronto After Dark Film Festival this year and nobody could’ve guessed judging by the title how it would play out. It’s an experimental piece of work because it’s supposedly been edited from a tape labelled Summer 99-00 found in Montreal. From there, director Sam Morgan turns bits of the tape into a hypnotic and somewhat haunting piece of found footage. While nothing explicitly scary happens, which is understandable since this is legitimately found footage and there’s no plot, Shitting a Penis devolves into something otherworldly that feels unsettling. You start to wonder who these people in the videos are, and if they’re still alive, or where they might’ve ended up, and it could even lead you to ponder how recorded images become like ghosts lingering on tapes and devices long after people are gone.
This isn’t a short that everyone will love. Shitting a Penis is a postmodern film because it urges the audience to create meaning. Either these images will resonate with you on some level, or they won’t. If they do, and if you also wonder about the ghostliness of VHS tapes, this film will leave you thinking for a little while.
The Portrait (2026)
Directed & Written by Julia Hogg
Starring Marissa Bondi & Gage Munroe
Horror
★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)
Julia Hogg’s The Portrait features a young couple who decide to draw together for a bit of fun. It starts off enjoyable. The girl shows off her cute drawing of the guy. Then the guy reveals his drawing of the girl. She’s disturbed by what he’s drawn. She doesn’t recognise herself. But he insists it’s how she looks. All she has to do is just look in the mirror and it’ll confirm everything…
The Portrait is the definition of short and sweet, in a perfect horror way. Being perceived by others is already fraught with anxiety because we can’t control how others see us. Hogg delivers an almost existential take on that anxiety, as the girl in her short experiences a clash between how she sees herself and how the guy she likes sees her. Even though he seems to like what he sees, she’s completely unnerved by it, especially once she looks in the mirror. What The Portrait understands is that the way others see us can actually warp our own sense of how we see ourselves, and Hogg takes this concept to a grotesque, uncanny extreme in a short that feels right at home amongst creepypastas.
