[Event Review] Brooklyn Horror Film Fest Short Film Blocks Review - Nightmare Fuel
With the “Nightmare Fuel” shorts block, BHFF ramps up the fear factor, with intense shocks and visceral body horror. Interestingly, most of the films have a common theme of inevitability - something relentlessly coming for the characters with malicious intent.
Death In A Box features the unavoidable approach of death itself, as a woman persuades her friend to visit a mysterious box that cryptically predicts time of death. The knowledge the friends gain leads to betrayal and violence, although one doesn’t realise that her fate was sealed before she even heard of the box.
A past trauma haunts the main character in Sleep - a woman who struggles to rest due to fear of her home being invaded again. An ultra-short but highly effective film, this tale of self-fulfilling prophecy concludes with one of the most chilling screams in recent horror memory.
It is a familial legacy that is fast approaching the protagonist in Aftertaste. A young chef in a high-end restaurant is under intense pressure at work and also facing the looming prospect of inheriting a spiritual family gift, which she describes as a “curse”. The everyday horror of kitchen work under the abusive head chef combines with glimpses of otherworldly threats - half-seen ghosts that are gone in a second but seem to always be getting closer.
Red Room is a lucid nightmare of a film, set in claustrophobic rooms that seem cut off from anywhere else, and contrasting scenes of dark, dreamlike woodland. The three main characters seem bonded by terrible past events and are struggling to make sense of what future fate may bring. The film as a whole has a deeply unsettling air and features a truly terrifying entity which exudes a quiet but determined sense of menace.
There’s a healthy dose of farce in Ringworms, in which a young couple head to a cabin for an ill-fated holiday. Keys can’t be found; an engagement plan is discovered but found to be unwelcome; a ring falls down a drain. But the presence of a bizarre cult in the basement means that more horrific trouble is headed the couple’s way, and a gross-out climax takes the gore up a level and certainly places it in the Nightmare Fuel category.
RELATED ARTICLES
New sci-fi theatre show Lethe explores the harsh realities that could exist if memory erasure were to be a possibility in the modern world.
With the “Nightmare Fuel” shorts block, BHFF ramps up the fear factor, with intense shocks and visceral body horror.
In Brooklyn Horror Film Fest’s “Creeping Terror” block of shorts, the works are linked by a shared atmosphere of slow-burn dread.
Comedy and horror can be the perfect combination…
A surprise dog which your partner didn’t consult you on? It sounds frustrating, but it becomes scary in Ryan Valdez’s short film We Got a Dog (2022), screened at this year’s Popcorn Frights film festival.
Popcorn Frights film festival showcased Aristotelis Maragkos’s creative retelling of a familiar story in The Timekeepers of Eternity (2022).
Max Gold’s Belle (2202) was showcased at Popcorn Frights Film Festival and it’s a beautiful addition to a genre festival.
EXPLORE
Now it’s time for Soho’s main 2023 event, which is presented over two weekends: a live film festival at the Whirled Cinema in Brixton, London, and an online festival a week later. Both have very rich and varied programmes (with no overlap this year), with something for every horror fan.
In the six years since its release the Nintendo Switch has amassed an extensive catalogue of games, with everything from puzzle platformer games to cute farming sims to, uh, whatever Waifu Uncovered is.
A Quiet Place (2018) opens 89 days after a race of extremely sound-sensitive creatures show up on Earth, perhaps from an exterritorial source. If you make any noise, even the slightest sound, you’re likely to be pounced upon by these extremely strong and staggeringly fast creatures and suffer a brutal death.
If you like cults, sacrificial parties, and lesbian undertones then Mona Awad’s Bunny is the book for you. Samantha, a student at a prestigious art university, feels isolated from her cliquey classmates, ‘the bunnies’.
The slasher sub genre has always been huge in the world of horror, but after the ‘70s and ‘80s introduced classic characters like Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers, Leatherface, and Jason, it’s not harsh to say that the ‘90s was slightly lacking in the icon department.
Mother is God in the eyes of a child, and it seems God has abandoned the town of Silent Hill. Silent Hill is not a place you want to visit.
Being able to see into the future or back into the past is a superpower that a lot of us would like to have. And while it may seem cool, in horror movies it usually involves characters being sucked into terrifying situations as they try to save themselves or other people with the information they’ve gleaned in their visions.
Both the original Pet Sematary (1989) and its 2019 remake are stories about the way death and grief can affect people in different ways. And while the films centre on Louis Creed and his increasingly terrible decision-making process, there’s no doubt that the story wouldn’t pack the same punch or make the same sense without his wife, Rachel.
This recorded performance of Heathers: The Musical from London’s The Other Palace will show for one night only in cinemas on 28th March bringing the show back to the big screen and making for some Big Fun as an experience, but with some variations that might be jarring for hardcore fans of the original.