She
Directed by Keegan Wilcox
Written by Matt Pelfrey
2015, USA
Two well-meaning men pick up a highly distressed woman who appears to be lost.
They then discover that no good deed goes unpunished in this very well made horror short that’s anchored by an excellent acting performance from Claudia Graf.
She is a potent, horror genre- encased glimpse at the devastating effects of sexual violence.
Sequence
Written & Directed by Carles Torrens
2013, USA
Chaos erupts as a man wakes to find everyone he comes into contact with has had a deeply disturbing dream about him the night before in this multiple award-winning short film.
Director Torrens also directed the horror shorts M is for Mom (2013) and Hide & Seek (2014) in addition to the ghost/haunted house horror feature Apartment 143 (aka Emergo, 2011).
His latest horror feature called Pet recently world premiered as part of the 2016 SXSW Festival’s Midnighters program to very positive reviews.
Autumn Harvest
Directed by Fredrik S. Hana
Written by Fredrik S. Hana & Marius Lunde
2014, Norway
A suicidal sailor finds a grim new reason to live in this very ambitious and superb black & white slice of Lovecraftian horror.
Hana previously made the serial killer short film Angst, Piss & Drid in 2013 and is currently on a very successful festival run with his latest horror short called Sister Hell.
Angst, Piss & Drid has its admirers, which I don’t count myself among, but Autumn Harvest instantly establishes Hana as a talent to watch very closely.
GOOD NIGHT
Written & Directed by Peter Czikrai
2013, Slovakia
A rented room and the pursuit of a mysterious black bag combine for hellish consequences in director Czikrai’s first horror short film.
Good Night adopts a much more slow-burn pace than his other two excellent apocalyptic horror shorts M is for Malnutrition and A….
As you’ll see in these three short films, Czikrai is a very talented filmmaker who deserves much more attention.
The Last Halloween
Directed by Marc Roussel
Written by Marc Roussel & Mark Thibodeau
2013, Canada
A group of costumed children go door to door in a ruined neighborhood carrying bags of candy and some dark secrets in The Last Halloween.
This excellent apocalyptic short film that had a very successful festival run shows both the external and internal devastation caused by the end of the world.
Filmmaker Roussel had previously made the award-winning 2010 horror short Remote but The Last Halloween is a more accomplished and effective piece of work that also happens to feature the welcome presence of Canadian character actor Julian Richings.
In the massive and ever-growing world of horror shorts, a film has to be unique to stand out and The Last Halloween is definitively unique.
Tuck Me In
Directed by Ignacio F. Rodo
Written by Juan J. Ruiz
2014, Spain
Making a truly memorable ultra-short horror short film is no easy task but Rodo and Ruiz achieve that difficult goal with Tuck Me In.
If you like your short horror very short, watch this back-to-back with Jason Eisener’s excellent One Last Dive.
The Storm
Written & Directed by Andre LeBlanc
2013, USA
It is not uncommon for a horror short film to play like the opening scene of a feature film.
This is the case with great horror shorts like Pedro Cristiani’s Deus Irae, Dante Vescio & Rodrigo Gasparini’s M is for Mailbox and Can Evrenol’s Baskin among others.
However, it is very unusual for a horror short to play like the first scene of the last third of a feature film like The Storm does.
Made by highly accomplished visual effects artist LeBlanc, this film is an ambitious take on the “Arctic horror” subgenre occupied by such feature films as all three versions of The Thing, Yim Pil-Sung’s Antarctic Journal (2005) and Larry Fessenden’s The Last Winter (2006).
The filmmaker is currently in post-production on another science fiction-oriented horror short called They Watch.
A…
Written & Directed by Peter Czikrai
2013, Slovakia
This horror short took second place in the Bloody Cuts “Who’s There?” short film competition that it should have won hands down.
Czikrai, who you might call an apocalyptic auteur, previously made the superb horror short films Good Night and M is for Malnutrition and is a talent to keep a very close eye on.
Perished
Written & Directed by Aaron McCann & Stefan Androv Radanovich
2011, Australia
This accomplished piece of apocalyptic cinema is obviously not for any readers suffering from zombie burnout.
For those readers not afflicted with that particular cinematic condition, you are in for an intense and very well made look at one man’s struggle with the end of the world as he knows it.
Perished has shades of Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend and that is intended as a very strong compliment.
I’m Dead
Written & Directed by Francesco Picone
2012, Italy
Also know as Io Sono Morta, I’m Dead is a superb example of the “sleeping giant awakens” story you see in other acclaimed horror short films such as Mariano Baino’s Caruncula and Josh MacDonald’s Game but Picone does it better here.
In 2015, Picone completed a zombie feature film called Age of the Dead based on his short Anger of the Dead and also made the horror short Martyn in 2013 but I’m Dead remains his most accomplished short form work to date.