In Ride, Baby, Ride writer/director Sofie Somoroff utilizes the underrepresented sub-genre of sentient vehicles to deliver a stylish horror short where a female mechanic (Celina Bernstein) must do battle with a monstrous Camaro. The film is incredibly well shot and while its subject matter draws some thematic comparisons to Christine, the surreal style and dark absurdity of the content is more akin to Titane. While the concept might sound silly to some, the execution is not and the underlying feminist message comes through clearly. Somoroff does an excellent job using concise imagery to commu ..read more

I’ve been a fan of White Gardenia (the underground artist collective helmed by controversial performance artist Daniel Valient) for quite some time now so naturally the idea of a definitive collection of their work was very appealing to me. Mutilation Theatre combines films from previous White Gardenia collections such as Blood Tastes Like Perfume and How to Raise Women from the Dead plus substantial additional footage. The film, released by Goredrome Pictures, comes in at a hefty four and a half hours and is billed as “The Definitive Short Film Collection”, which at that length it certainly ..read more

With Fckin Nuts, writer/director Sam Fox channels the anxiety of introducing your partner to your parents into a short that is as quirky as it is grotesque. The film opens with Sandy (Maddie Nichols) on the phone tearfully trying to reach her boyfriend Dan (Vincent Stalba, The Blood of the Dinosaurs) who, much to her dismay shows, up at her front door. After professing his love for her, he insists on meeting her parents which she is adamantly opposed to and repeatedly states that they are nuts. However it isn’t long before he finally convinces her to let him in and that’s when things really g ..read more

“One of the most disturbing documentaries ever made” a quote attributed to no one confidently proclaims at the top of the cover art. It’s a bold move to state this about your own film rather than waiting for others to bestow it upon you, but when the subject of your documentary is White Gardenia, a performance art collective that is literally on the cutting edge of underground Extreme Cinema you may have good cause to. So, does The Art of Self Harm live up to this proclamation or is it a hyperbolic marketing tactic? We’ll get more into this in a minute. White Gardenia has been growing in prom ..read more

Truly anything can be the villain of a horror movie it seems, and I do mean anything. From killer Kombucha bottles to deadly donuts to sentient tires and evil bongs, there really is no object too random or absurd to come to life and wreak havoc in a horror film. These films aren’t so much striving for quality as banking on morbid curiosity, so the real trick is convincing the viewer that once they’ve started something like Death Toilet 5: Invasion of the Potty Snatchers there is actually enough entertaining content to keep them there for ninety minutes. When I saw that “killer burrito” is wha ..read more

Short films are challenging because in almost no time you need to establish the world, the stakes, and make the audience care about what’s happening. Final Gasp seems to struggle a bit with some of these concepts as it tells the story of a young woman (Catarina Carvalho) who receives a mysterious package while alone in the apartment. From a storyline perspective all the necessary information is provided, but since other characters play such key roles in the story, it would have been more effective if we had actually seen them rather than only having them referred to or interacted with through ..read more

Every movie is made for a reason. More often than not that reason is nothing more than the rapid commodification of something resembling entertainment that is regurgitated out onto the market simply to make money. Other films eschew any concerns of commercial success in service of presenting the artist’s raw, unfiltered expression of ideas. In the simplest of terms, this is what distinguishes an art film from a commercial one, but whether or not it is a good art film depends on how effectively those ideas can be conveyed to the intended audience. Justine is undeniably an art film as the graph ..read more

For many horror fans (especially those of us of a certain age) the Crypt Keeper holds a special place in our black little hearts. There have been many different types of horror anthology hosts ranging from the dignified and austere to the goofy and ridiculous. While the Crypt Keeper was certainly more the latter, there was something about that shriveled little monstrosity spouting out unbelievably cringey puns that just made him so goddamn endearing. The Keeper may not have been the first horror host, but he remains one of the more memorable ones and ever since, numerous horror anthologies ha ..read more

Film is primarily a visual language and if you want to convey something to the audience in under three minutes then your visuals need to be on point and memorable. Such is the case with White Willow which deftly communicates a gruesome little story about self mutilation that won’t soon leave your mind. The film’s sole performer (Emily Lamberski) turns in a solid, compelling performance which is further enhanced by the excellent SFX work by makeup artist Jess Marie. Writer/director Ryan Swantek’s quick cuts and eerie ambiance create a jarring, unsettling experience while establishing a charact ..read more

Ambiguity in film is a difficult needle to thread, holding back just enough information to give the audience something to chew on afterwards without omitting key details required for supporting the action onscreen. In under fifteen minutes, Kiddo establishes a very intriguing world brought to life by excellent acting, a great visual style, and some nice moments of brutality. The sense of dread is palpable right from the beginning as we join middle-aged woman Kiddo (Lisa Howard) on a bus full of teens, all of them clad in matching pink jumpsuits. As the bus winds lazily through the bucolic cou ..read more