Chattanooga Film Festival 2023: Dangerous Visions Showcase

One thing I’ve grown to appreciate more over the years is the short film. Short films can serve many functions, not the least of which is how much cheaper they are to create than feature-length films, thus being the perfect avenue for filmmakers to sharpen their skills, hone their voice, and hopefully grab the attention of the industry. Short films need to be extremely economical in delivering their story—whereas feature films might have two, sometimes three hours to develop their plots and characters, shorts need to be able to condense the same impact and emotional investment in as little as five to fifteen minutes. 

It’s this concentration of story that makes shorts so exciting to watch. Horror, in particular, seems to be well suited for the format, because it allows filmmakers to endlessly explore their creativity, often leading directly to bigger productions or even full-length adaptations of their own shorts. Successful films like The Babadook (2014), Smile (2022), Trick 'R Treat (2007), Lights Out (2016), and most recently, Skinamarink (2022), all began as short films.

So it is with great excitement that I kicked off my weekend at the 10th Chattanooga Film Festival with one of their short film blocks, the “Dangerous Visions Shorts Showcase,” a block that focuses, of course, on horror and sci-fi offerings. While the whole block is worth checking out, I’ve picked out a few standout selections that, for one reason or another, are must-see entries for genre fans.

Fetal Position

Fetal Position, written and directed by Joseph Yates, is an eye-catching film that tackles the at-times intertwining state of abortion and immigration policies in the U.S. This film is irreverent, it’s foul, and it’s disgusting. And that’s why I love it. It’s a hilarious thumbing of the nose at the topics that consume so much of our political discourse, but it’s also an excellent display of balancing practical effects with CG to make an effective and polished final product.

No Overnight Parking

This mini-slasher stars Alyssa Milano as an angry, stressed woman on Halloween night who just wants to get out of her parking garage, which closes in less than five minutes. When a masked figure attempts to punish her for getting herself locked in the garage, Milano realizes that she’s had enough for the night, twisting the would-be killer’s game around and fighting back. Written and directed by Meg Swertlow, No Overnight Parking is an entertaining reaction to played out slasher tropes.

The Inverts

This found footage conspiracy thriller, written, directed, and starring Evan Jordan, is a great example of why I love the found footage format so much. By taking its interdimensional sci-fi premise and presenting it via the edited video diary of a conspiracy theorist, or rather notably, via a third party who is clearly collecting evidence such as the video diary of similar subjects, The Inverts accomplishes two things. First, it lends the story an easy credibility that might otherwise have had to be established through other, time-consuming means; but second, it does a great job of accenting common techniques real conspiracy theorists seem to use of seeming to provide evidence of their claims without actually substantiating any of it. It’s a fantastic use of the genre that purposefully leaves more questions than answers.

Splinter

Mark Bernardin wrote and directed Splinter, an inventive sci-fi film featuring an airplane that never lands. Why? The plane’s only passenger, 10-year-old Benjamin, can never put his feet on the ground, because once he does, rage begins to infect everyone around him, with deadly consequences. Splinter is a Twilight-Zone-like short that isn’t so much concerned with resolving its plot as it is with asking the question: What exactly do you do, morally, if the 10-year-old child under your care can, through no fault of his own, cause mass hysteria?

They Call It… Red Cemetery

They Call It… Red Cemetery isn’t a horror film—it’s a Western. But I had to highlight it because it’s just so damn cool. Written and directed by Francisco Lacerda, and starring Thomas Aske Berg and Francisco Afonso Lopes, Red Cemetery is a Portuguese spaghetti western in which two outlaws, and former partners, face off over a chest of stolen coins. What makes this such a standout film isn’t just that it is shot beautifully, but the story captivates from the first Portuguese-dubbed word spoken as well as some great looking blood effects. 

Keep Scrolling

Of all the shorts in this block, Keep Scrolling, written and directed by Luke Longmire and starring Amelia Longmire, along with Autumn Longmire and Luke, himself, is the one that terrified me the most. The film clocks in at only three minutes long, but, like the TikTok video that drives the plot forward, Longmire packs a lot of punch into such a brief runtime. In Keep Scrolling, a young girl lies in bed, scrolling through TikTok, when she chances upon a livestream of a ghostly figure standing in the corner. What comes next is a spine-tingling example of haunted media and social media horror, giving vibes not unlike those put out by the shorts behind Lights Out and The Babadook. Interesting that both of those films spawned highly successful features, huh?

Dead Enders

This bleak sci-fi horror is what you’d get if the characters from Clerks found themselves in the middle of a mutant bug invasion. Directed by Fidel Ruiz-Healy & Tyler Walker, Dead Enders stars Skarlett Redd as an unmotivated gas station attendant, Maya. Maya’s nights at the station are populated by other small-town “dead enders,” who never made it far from their hometown, finding themselves caught up in the ennui of Anytown, U.S.A. But when the town is attacked by mind-controlling mutant bugs, she realizes that she might have a pretty good reason to get out of Dodge. Great practical effects, stylish lighting, and a genuinely funny cast make Dead Enders a fun short thriller filled with promise.

Gnomes

If you watch CFF’s “Dangerous Visions” showcase in the order it’s presented, the final film you’ll see is Ruwan Heggelman’s Gnomes, which he co-wrote with Jasper ten Hoor and Richard Raaphorst. And of all the films on this list, Gnomes is the feverish exclamation point that will have everyone talking. This unassuming title takes the practical puppetry of the Puppet Master franchise, gives it a healthy dose of folklore, and runs it through a Rube Goldberg machine to create a slick, gory torture apparatus that would make Pinhead squirm. Gnomes doesn’t waste time on dialogue or scenery—it goes straight into delivering the hyper-violent creatures we never knew we needed to fear. We don’t often get to see this style of film anymore and it’s a shame. Gnomes is a blast that I would love to see more of.

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Article written by ande thomas

Ande loves the intersection of sci-fi and horror, where our understanding of the natural world clashes with our fear of the new and unknown. He writes about monsters and foreign horror and can also be found over on Letterboxd.