Before our favorite month comes to a close, we couldn’t help but scare up a few sweet short horror treats to compliment your fright feast.
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Barry Gettin’ Married (10 minutes)
A fame-hungry YouTuber tries to make his vows go viral in the Wild West.
Barry is a YouTuber willing to do anything for viral fame—including surprising his girlfriend, Callie, with a grand plan in a creepy, remote western town. That plan includes proposing to her on camera and convincing her to marry him immediately after in the quaint little onsite chapel. His friend, Alonso, isn’t so sure it’s a great idea, and his trepidations increase when the trio arrives at the location; he immediately senses something isn’t right. It seems to be more of an actual ghost town than a tourist trap.
But Barry is oblivious to any potential danger, singularly focused on his carefully orchestrated production. What he craves is a great bit of reality TV to get him to a million subscribers. What he gets is a far more sobering reality than he bargained for when the proposal goes horribly wrong. He might still get to walk down the aisle after all, but will it be the wedding of his dreams — or nightmare nuptials?
Barry Gettin’ Married is a funny and fast-paced blend of mockumentary style and groan-inducing influencer antics gone wrong. It was a clever concept born out of the 48-Hour Film Project, where director Alan David Morgan and writer Andrew Sego had just 48 hours to create a movie from scratch. With no idea what kind of film they’d be making, they received their prompts the night before production began. Armed with a dedicated crew and a few talented actors, they created the story in a day and filmed it the next.
After the competition, they continued refining the film, completing the full 10-minute version that is now available to watch.
The setting is spectacular, the performances are strong, and the payoff is wickedly fun.
Meat Cleaver (15 minutes)
Wendy has a meat cleaver in her head.
Written and directed by Jared Asher Harris, Meat Cleaver is captivating from the first frame.
We begin as a bright-eyed young woman named Wendy (Ruth Bell) sits in a pristine white room at a desk across from a distinguished white-haired black woman. She wears an elegant floor-length black dress and pearls. The painting behind the woman, Jane (Socorro Jones), makes it look like she is perched among the clouds. Wendy, with her striking red hair, impossibly blue eyes, and bright blue dress, looks like she has stepped out of a storybook.
There’s something surreal about the setting and the costuming—a bit of Burton-esque Alice in Wonderland meets Twin Peaks. It’s strange even before the camera pans up to finally reveal that sweet Wendy has a meat cleaver sticking out of her head, a fact to which she is apparently oblivious.
After Jane helps remove the cleaver, we realize who she is, what this dreamlike place is, and why Wendy is here. It’s a devilishly fun reveal, and it’s only the beginning.
This is such a delightful short that works on every level. Visually mesmerizing with stellar performances across the board, Asher—a creative, risk-taking music video director known for his hauntingly beautiful video for Hozier’s “All Things End”—delivers a home run with this fantasy-horror-comedy, Asher’s first fully self-generated project.
It’s a deeply personal project born out of the tumultuous struggles of the writers’ strike and informed by his own fight to overcome life’s adversities. The response to the film from festivals and its online showcase, thanks to Crypt TV, has been tremendous, with audiences hailing it as hilarious and worthy of a feature film adaptation.
Though it definitely leans more into humor than horror, it’s wildly original, creative, gorgeously crafted, and truly funny—a must-watch.
It also boasts its own super catchy theme song courtesy of Mo Troper that will make you enjoy every second of the closing credits.
STRANGE CREATURES (6 minutes)
Desperate to see her brother again, a young woman visits the site of his death.
A woman, Nell (Quinn Jackson; It Cuts Deep), drives out to a wooded campsite at night, tracing a mysterious call she received from a payphone. The call was from her brother Aiden (Sean-Michael Wilkinson; American Horror Story). The only problem is Aiden is dead. After hanging up with her girlfriend, Becca (Christine Nyland; An Unquiet Grave), the payphone rings, and a deformed figure rushes out at her from the darkened woods before suddenly disappearing.
Understandably rattled, she scrambles to get back in the car and get out of there. But she’s stopped when she receives another phone call; her brother’s voice is on the other end, desperately calling for help, leaving her torn between gripping fear and the undying love for her lost sibling.
Before being picked up by Crypt TV for digital distribution, the spectacular Strange Creatures screened at over fifty film festivals, including genre favorites such as Brooklyn Horror, Panic Fest, Chattanooga, and FilmQuest and Oscar-qualifiers like HollyShorts, Florida, and Nashville, as well as winning awards at HorrorFest and Terror on the Plains.
Jackson delivers a potent, riveting, and heartbreaking performance full of terror and anguish.
The creature effects are outstanding, and this perfect spooky season watch is dripping in atmosphere.
I’d love to see this become a proof of concept for a feature film, as this one definitely left me wanting more.
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