Stir Cheat Sheet: 5 flicks to freak you out at the Vancouver Short Film Festival's After Dark series
Retro ‘80s tech, late-night hallucinations, giant arachnids, and more
Glow Dorris (left) and Too Late.
FANS OF the Vancouver Short Film Festival, which moves online January 22 to 24, know that the small format often allows for big risks.
And in the case of its popular After Dark programming, the BC filmmakers often take those chances to extremes. In the case of this year’s selections, that means everything from monster bugs to the kind of body horror that would make David Cronenberg blush. Other motifs this year? Retro ‘80s tech, from Walkmans to neon, is back, and zombies also refuse to die.
Below we hit just the few of the creepiest homegrown highlights in the “double block” of After Dark shorts that hits the fest January 23 (available to view to the 31st). Rest assured there’s much more, by both established and emerging names.
Itsy Bitsy Spider
Filmmaker Brodi-Jo Scalise and cinematographer Jeff Zwicker build high anxiety as a man battles an outsized arachnid in his boyfriend’s heritage apartment. Inventive lensing and shadowy lighting up the tension, as fear over the spider mirrors paranoia over his partner’s faithfulness.
Too Late
Veteran local animator Roy Stein creates a rich visual world for a guy who starts to lose it on a caffeine-fuelled late-shift. Lit by the Hal-like red glow of his cubicle computer, he falls into a coffee-soaked nightmare that blends the surreal and the noir.
The Purgamentum
The Purgamentum is one of the shortest shorts at After Dark, but it packs an atmospheric punch. When a marine biologist hears a ghostly sound calling to her from an underwater microphone system, she calls in a diver to help. Set at night, in the remote Pacific Northwest, the story feels fresh enough to tease out to feature length.
The Freeze
The creepy touches are all here—closeups of a thermostat that cracks from the cold; a grinning roommate glued to old horror movies on her laptop; and the freaky, turquoise ‘50s fridge, just installed by the landlord—one that cracks open to reveal something much worse than last week’s rotten leftovers. Gruesome with style.
Glow Dorris
Headgear is its own horror movie come to life, but here, director Shelby Wilson blends it with that other terrifying ‘80s standby: pink-spandex-and-headband aerobics. In this short, a deeply weird and orthodontically challenged girl (Madison Isolina) receives a surprise VHS workout video that sucks her into its thrall. More great work from lenser Jeff Zwicker—think green shag rugs scattered with polaroid selfies and gummy worms—in one of the fest’s more warped and ‘80s throwbacks.
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