Short Film Showcase: Three Shorts with a Taste for Blood
With the long-awaited remake of Nosferatu by Robert Eggers quickly approaching, it’s a great time to dust off your old favorite vampire flicks to amp yourself up. Whether you’re an Interview with the Vampire (1994) person or you’re more into The Lost Boys (1987), or even if you’re a 30 Days of Night (2007) fanatic, vamps have the unique ability among monsters to adapt to almost any kind of story. In the three short films below, you get to see that versatility in action, as the vampires here stalk the American frontier, lure unsuspecting vacationers in Quebec, and even haunt modernized neighborhoods. These filmmakers all take vastly different approaches to their vampire stories, proving how deftly the creature is able to blend in.
Blood Bait
Blood Bait, written and directed by Sam Krass, is a low-budget vampire film filmed in Saint-Côme, Quebec. Inspired by the Hammer films of the '60s and '70s, which he would watch dubbed in French, Krass wanted to replicate this nostalgic experience by having his actors perform their lines in their native French and then dubbing them back into English in post-production. It’s a stylistic choice that I can really respect—it was dubbed versions that exposed many of us to our first international films and the rich history beyond the Hollywood system. It’s impressive to see, especially on a tight budget, as dubbing can add countless hours to the production and potentially costly studio time.
The film pivots around a remote house that is secretly inhabited by the mysterious Lucie Corriveau (played by Katherine Graham), who feeds on those who come to stay. She is assisted by her two sons, played by Patrick Marsh and J. Sébastien Côté, as well as Roberge (Ryan Dalman), the apparent landlord of the house and the story’s Renfield-like character. When an ex-vampire hunter is brought back into the game by his dead sister’s widower, he hopes to rid the area of evil once and for all.
Blood Bait is a great example of paying homage to an earlier style of film without sacrificing a modern setting. While the hallmark of so many Hammer films is the elaborate sets and costumes, Blood Bait is able to use more modest means to evoke its aesthetic—like its title cards and score, for instance (the latter having recently won Best Score at the 2024 Film Basement Horror Film Awards in L.A.). It brings the vampire story away from the mountainous forests of Eastern Europe to rural Canada, and its characters feel perfectly suited to the change. Beyond the Hammer influences, it’s the characters—the vampire’s minions, in particular—that give the film a feel that could blend right in with some of the earlier shot-on-video home invasion flicks that were popular in the '90s’ DIY era.
Admittedly, as inventive as the English dubbing is, some of the voices used are more cartoonish than I think the film deserves, and may turn some away, though I appreciate their commitment to the bit. Even so, Blood Bait is a great vampire flick with a ton of talent and a clear love for the genre, and is available in its entirety on Youtube.
Night of Her
In the early 1970s, a trend emerged in which vampire films focused more on the erotic and sapphic. Films like The Vampire Lovers (1970), Daughters of Darkness (1971), and Vampyros Lesbos (1971) all put a seductive spin on the vampire tale, concentrating more on a vampire’s powers of persuasion than on its bloodsucking diet.
In Night of Her, directed by Elaina Walters and Emiliano Torija, and written by Walters, the vampire works more as the impetus for its main characters to voice their desires than as an antagonist in the traditional sense. The film follows Laura (Clark Eileen Atkinson) and her best friend Marnie (Haley Holmes) as they debate whether or not their neighbor Camille (Chloe Chamberlain) is a vampire. Despite Marnie’s protests, Laura resolves to find out once and for all, leaving Marnie to rescue her from Camille and her vampire coven.
Night of Her’s razor-sharp production design, led by Nick Fry, nails the period aesthetic while the camera’s frequent soft focus adds to the dreamlike quality shared by its predecessors. Like so many of the films it draws from, Night of Her seems to also take inspiration from Sheridan Le Fanu’s novella Carmilla—its characters’ names, for sure, but also themes such as the ineptitude of its male characters and the breaking free of its female characters from their emotional restraints. While Night of Her isn’t currently available online, it may find its way to a screening around Pittsburgh. It’s not a chance I’d suggest passing up.
Emiliano Torija and Elaina Walters can be found on Instagram @emilian0torija and @afterdarkelaina. Walters is also the organizer of Cinema Café, a social event for filmmakers at Mr. Small’s Café in Millvale.
Sætnere
In Sætnere, written and directed by Jeremy Parsons, a traveling stranger brings his bloodlust to a homesteading family with a room for rent. Early on, the film gives off strong Night of the Hunter (1955) or Eyes of My Mother (2016) vibes—black and white photography, isolated location, and the arrival of an unwelcome visitor all lend weight to the comparison. But driven by an eerie performance by Ryann Sekerak as the young Ana, Sætnere does a great job of setting expectations and bringing them crashing back down around you.
The film opens with the traveler, a man called Alfansi played by Brett Wagner, as he walks along a remote country road, pausing momentarily at a crossroads (an ominous image in its own right), before turning toward what turns out to be the home of Ellen (Christine Starkey), Ana, and William Duncan (Patrick Egan). Despite Ana’s standoffishness, Alfansi is invited in for supper.
I hesitate to talk more about its plot, other than that Sætnere is a short but incredibly effective game of cat and mouse that satisfies with its eight-minute runtime. With the right treatment, I could see it being expanded into a tense featurette or even a full-length picture—its relatively sparse dialogue being traded for moments of exploration about the house and witty exchanges between Alfansi and his potential victims. Still, it’s a film that has stuck with me, and it’s one more vampire film that I won’t hesitate to recommend.
You can find Jeremy Parsons and his work on Instagram @jparsonsfilm and the film, available on Vimeo, can be seen here:
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 is an independent member of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies and a supporting member of the Horror Writers Association. He writes about monsters and foreign horror and can also be found over on Letterboxd.
Throughout the decades, slasher film villains have had their fair share of bizarre motivations for committing violence. In Jamie Langlands’s The R.I.P Man, killer Alden Pick gathers the teeth of his victims to put in his own toothless mouth in deference to an obscure medieval Italian clan of misfits.