Sticks
Written & Directed by Noah Ishihara & CJ Beasley
2023, USA
A young man is injured while hiking with his girlfriend. When she doesn’t return with help, he strikes out on his own to search for her and is confronted with disturbing revelations.
Sticks delivers some creepy backwoods ambience on its limited budget and this short establishes the Ishihara/Beasley creative duo as one to watch in the world of horror short films.
God’s Kingdom
Written & Directed by Guy Soulsby
2018, England
A priest and a young girl make their way through the countryside as they flee from evil forces.
Guy Soulsby delivers an ambitious, accomplished piece full of high-grade acting-an element sorely lacking in many short genre films.
Soulsby also made the horror shorts Devil Makes Work (2014) and A Sickness (2021).
Blight
Directed by Brian Deane
Written by Matthew Roche
2015, Ireland
A young priest makes his way to a remote island village to help a couple deal with their demonically possessed, pregnant daughter in this very well-made, atmospheric short.
Director Deane also made the dark short films Foxglove (2015) and At Arm’s Length (2021).
Blight makes a great double-feature with Peter Czikrai’s A….
Baskin
Written & Directed by Can Evrenol
2013, Turkey
This is Turkish auteur Evrenol’s last stand-alone horror short before entering the world of feature filmmaking and it is an audacious one. Baskin is a gruesome, nightmarish and bloody instant classic of short-form terror.
Evrenol made a highly regarded feature version of Baskin in 2015 that takes the story in a slightly more surreal direction and has recently completed his latest horror film Housewife.
Watch one of Can Evrenol’s outstanding earlier shorts To My Mother and Father here on The Brief Macabre.
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.
Deus Irae
Written & Directed by Pedro Cristiani
2010, Argentina
Deus Irae is the type of short film that comes off as the opening scene of a feature film. This classification happens to fit very well as director/screenwriter Cristiani intends to make a feature-length version of this ambitious, award-winning short.
Let’s hope he can make that happen because Deus Irae deserves to be a feature film.
While the concept for this particular supernatural short film cries out for a larger budget, Cristiani makes it work with the resources at hand despite leaving the audience a bit short-changed by the lack of a real ending.
Cristiani made another horror short film El Hombre De La Bosa (aka Man in a Bag) in 2010 that, despite being well-made, isn’t as memorable as his short debut Deus Irae.