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Overlook Film Festival

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The Overlook Film Festival, held in New Orleans earlier this month, didn’t simply cast looming shadows with its feature film selection. The festival also offered bite-sized terror with an array of short films that brought a sense of unease to the Big Easy.

Of course, short films have become the lifeblood of the horror industry and blockbuster filmmakers like Fede Alvarez and David Sandberg made names for themselves in that medium. Because of the accessibility of hosting sites like YouTube and Vimeo, short films, and the filmmakers behind them, have developed increasingly loyal fanbases, with viewers going back through the films to look for answers or pieces of lore, and make entire Reddit threads dedicated to seven-minute works. Studios are catching onto this trend more quickly than they ever have before. Many of the filmmakers behind some of horror’s most recent hits, and this year’s most anticipated films, built their audience through shorts: RackaRacka (Bring Her Back), Markiplier (Iron Lung), Curry Barker (Obsession), Damian McCarthy (Hokum), Kane Parsons (Backrooms) and Casper Kelly (Buddy).

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The 26 short horror films showcased at the Overlook Film Festival were categorized by “Feral,” “Freaky,” and “Static.” The Feral category offered films about sexual and gender-centric horror ranging from the romantic to the taboo. Freaky delivered on what is more commonly perceived as horror from monsters to folklore. And Static wandered into liminal spaces, the inexplicable, and terrors sometimes best left unspoken. Every film offered something to admire – an image, sound, or performance that stuck with me. And there’s no doubt that many of these directors will get prominent billing in front of major feature films in the coming years. These eight short films were my favorites:

Haint Dir. Jahmil Eady – Freaky

As gentrifiers take over her neighborhood, a Gullah Geechee woman, Annabelle (Melanie Nicholls-King) calls on ancestral knowledge, which has dire consequences for the newcomers who have begun to take over the land, ignorant of its history. What Annabelle unleashes puts her at odds with her policewoman daughter, Kassie (Imani Lewis) as both women are confronted by the means in which they’ve chosen to protect the community. With a strong sense of setting and a standout performance by Nicholls-King, Haint feels like the perfect concept for a feature film, especially in the post-Sinners horror scene.

Nail-Biter Dir. Joseph Burch – Freaky

On her 18th birthday, an anxious young woman, Amy (Alexa Swinton) is faced with a family curse that has ravaged her bloodline. Despite her mother’s (Amy Cropsey) insistent warnings, she cannot stop biting her fingernails. Is Amy merely a subject to her mentally ill mother’s control issues, or does the curse portend a more awful revelation. Nail-Biter captures the ageless quality of gothic folklore and creates a great sense of space in Amy’s dimly lit house, allowing the shadows to play their tricks until the well-earned climax.

Scissors Dir. Hannah Alline – Feral

A man (Ethan Embry) with a grudge against women crashes a bachelorette party prepared to brutally kill everyone there. As he comes to find out, this group of women, portrayed by Georgia Bridgers, Jenna Kanell, Najah Bradley, Hannah Alline, Anissa Matlock, and Hannah Aslesen, are all queer and none of them take him seriously. Scissors is a clever and funny romp that turns the tables on the slasher format and deconstructs the phallic symbolism associated with the genre.

Ghoststory Dir. Alex Jacobs – Static

On an old VHS recording of a woman (Gabriella Ortega Ricketts) talks about a ghost she saw in the woods by her house growing up. This footage is interspliced with haunting images of a low-res ghost (Luke Chamberlain) slowly approaching the camera. Ghoststory is deceptively simple and the woman’s refusal to ever fully tell the ghost story may seem frustrating. But as she starts and restarts her story, each time with a different tone of voice and different emphasis on the words, the feeling of dread about what’s being left unsaid grows. Ghoststory feels like something fans of Jane Schoenbrun and Kyle Edward Ball would enjoy.

Man Eating Pussy Dir. Lee Lawson – Feral

Freddie (Julian Richings), a dying

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