VITAL INSTRUMENTS, 17min., USA
Directed by Greg Kase
In this dark fever dream, a botched pawn shop robbery sends desperate brothers Walter and Pete, and their newly employed getaway driver Cutty, hobbling to a safe house that was supposed to be abandoned. Instead, they find shackled women in critical need of their help. Things complicate after their captor is mortally wounded in a shootout, and the predicament as to why they are prisoners in the first place becomes highly questionable—especially after the first one they reluctantly release immediately (and violently) kills herself, and the rest of them start chanting in ancient tongues.

https://vitalinstruments.wixsite.com/movie
https://www.facebook.com/Vital.Instruments.Movie/
https://www.instagram.com/vital_instruments_movie/

Get to know the filmmaking team:

The concept of the crooks vs occult was a marriage of two genres we all deeply enjoyed, Heist and Spooky Occult Horror. As a group of horror film fans, we had never seen a movie do this in the same way this concept was blossoming in our minds. The exploration of a clash between outcasts of society, a sort of stand off on the fringes. Like most filmmakers, we started describing scenes that we would like to see and dialogue we would want to hear until it culminated in the understanding that if we wanted to see it, we had to make it.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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NO SLASHER HERE, 9min., USA
Directed by Robert Tiemstra
A woman comes home from work, only to receive an unsettling phone call. Does the danger only exist over the phone, or is there a masked killer inside her home?

https://instagram.com/the_timestar

Get to know the filmmaker:
The production for ‘No Slasher Here’ started with a New Years’ Day text message from me to Llenelle, my producing partner for this film – “do you want to make a spooky movie this year?” We’d worked together before, but never on a horror film. I was just finishing up the film festival run for my last film – a dystopian short called The October Martyr – and I was feeling the urge to do something scrappy & fun. Once I had Llenelle on board to act in something, I just asked myself ‘what sort of horror movie would I cast her in?’ and the answer came in the form of a When a Stranger Calls/Black Christmas/Scream style horror movie opening. The central conceit occurred to me while I was on a walk – instead of having a killer call someone, what if the ‘victim’ in this kind of setup picks up the phone to find another similar horror movie opening going on somewhere else? Then it became a puzzle for me to solve, a weird mobius strip of slasher movie suspense.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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AUGURY, 5min., USA
Directed by Cousteau Bix Christopher
What do you see?

Get to know the filmmaker:

I have always been fascinated with film, and I fully committed to being a filmmaker at age 11, a passion that has never faltered for me. With the case of Augury, it had certainly been a while since I created my last short film (during the pandemic). A lot of momentum was derailed due to covid, so I switched gears and while working full-time focused on getting my Bachelor’s degree in Film and Media Studies through ASU Online. Throughout this time, I also did extensive amounts of personal research into cinematography and film production to learn as much as I could.

Once I finally received my Bachelor’s, I decided to put myself to the test. I wanted to make the highest quality production I could with essentially no budget. I believe the total budget for this film was around $200, and it pretty much all went to the prop and craft services. I don’t come from a wealthy family, and never had that “rich uncle” or anyone who would be able to fund my film endeavors, so being self-funded I always leaned heavily into how to “get the best bang for your buck.” I had some gear I collected over the years, and with my trusty Blackmagic Pocket, two video lights, a little LED light mat, and the absolute unbridled passion from my amazing cast and crew, Augury came to be.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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THE BOOK OF NAUGHTY KIDS, 17min., Brazil
Directed by Miguel Soares Moreira
Amanda, a curious 10-year-old, wonders about the existence of Santa Claus. After some trouble at school caused by her classmates Marcel and Lana, she wishes they would disappear from her life. On Christmas Eve, she discovers that Santa might not be so good after all. Who is the naughty or the nice kid?

https://www.crossfilmes.com/
https://instagram.com/olivrodcm

Get to know the filmmaker:

Probably the love of original horror stories related to brazilian’s urban legends, which unfortunatelly are not very well explored.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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THE BEF, 9min., USA
Directed by Eric Burleson
While being pursued by a police officer, a young boy struggles with his decisions for the baby in his care and how to help his sick mother.

https://instagram.com/burlesoneric

Get to know the filmmaker:

The motivation for the bef started because I wanted to do one more short film on the east coast before I moved to Los Angeles. Time was definitely not on our side. I had planned to do my cross country road trip at the end of July 2018 and it was May. Once the script was completed we hit the ground running on pre-production. Luckily when writing the script I already had the actors in mind for Sammy and Baby but I knew that if I could not get the families on board, then the film would not have happened. Thankfully, after talking with both sets of parents and children, they all were interested and agreed to be in the film. I had worked with Jacob Shapiro (Sammy) and Michael Harrington (Baby) before this so I knew they were the perfect choices. Jacob was the lead in a narrative music video I directed and Michael was in a commercial I directed earlier that year.

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JOINTS, 12min., USA, Horror/Comedy
Directed by Hadrian Lynn

Get to know the filmmaker:

I was and still am obsessed with the zombie genre, and have always wanted to do a zombie film. When the opportunity rose to make a 10-15 minute short film, I gladly took it and created this film! Other than my love of zombie movies, some other sources and motivated/inspired me were the movie 12 Angry Men and my own personal life.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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SINS OF THE FATHER, 102min,. USA, Horror
Directed by Vanessa M. H. Powers
After the death of his father, Aden and his mother, Sarah, find themselves responsible for the sale of his family home – a place they thought they’d left behind. When Sarah’s friends arrive to help, the task seems almost manageable. However, as they clear out the house, they uncover secrets in Sarah’s past and the sinister nature of the cultivated community Aden was raised in…. And his father’s family is not so eager to let the sins of the past go unpunished.

https://www.sinsofthefatherfilm.com/
https://www.facebook.com/Sinsfatherfilm/
https://twitter.com/sinsfatherfilm
https://www.instagram.com/sinsfatherfilm/

Get to know the producer/writer Tristan Corrigan:

The Director (Vanessa M. H. Powers) and the EP/Writer (Tristan Corrigan) have known each other since high school and had talked about doing a horror film on Tristan’s family farm. During COVID it was brought up that filming in an isolated area would be ideal and from there the idea and script was born.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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SCARLETT O., 6min., USA, Horror
Directed by Alexandra Tebano, Dale Johnson
A tortured woman is stuck in the purgatory in her own mind forced to relive the same excruciating moment over and over again.

Get to know the filmmakers:

Alexandra: I had found this script again, after years of sitting with it, and it still resonated so much with me. I had realized a lot of the same thought patterns and neurosis was still there, and I felt compelled to make it as the ultimate purge of these emotions and feelings. It felt that if I could really make it this time, I could.

Dale: My main motivation as executive producer was to support Alexandra who wrote it, acted in it, co-directed it and co-produced it.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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ENTER THE ROOM, 15min., USA
Directed by Harry Waldman
A young adult (Brian) is visited by his brother, Jeremy, who needs a place to stay as he settles into his new city. The two polar opposite personalities begin to clash as Jeremy’s presence poses a threat to Brian’s way of life. Brian’s uptight personality and unreasonable living standards rub off on Jeremy, creating an incredible amount of tension. Bad blood, stemming from a traumatic past event reveals the shocking truth of the brothers’ current situations, as Brian struggles to differentiate between reality and his worst nightmares.

http://www.edgewaterfilmproductions.com/
https://www.facebook.com/EntertheRoommovie/

https://www.instagram.com/hwaldman18/

Get to know the filmmaker:
-My relationship with my roommate during the first semester of my freshman year of college is what gave me the idea for “Enter the Room”. Almost all of the various things that Brian was getting on Jeremy’s case about during the narrative were actual things that my roommate accused me of. (And there were other things he said/did to me that I wasn’t able to fit into the film)

Living with him was a very unpleasant experience for me, and I felt that I needed to get it off my chest by telling this story. In addition to Brian being based on my college roommate, I added a disturbing and tragic backstory about him and decided that he and Jeremy being brothers would make for a more interesting narrative. While I am not nearly as uptight as my college roommate was, I can be a bit neurotic, so I took “pieces of myself” which I injected into Brian in order to make him more layered. In general, I believe that creating complex characters often requires giving them flaws that can make them unlikeable at times, and I always do my best to try to walk in the shoes of the anti-hero or villain in order to portray them in a more genuine manner.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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PIT & PENDULUM, 27min., Canada, Drama/Horror
Directed by J. Aldric Gaudet
It is the terrorizing story of a person sentenced to death who becomes the plaything of their jailers. They are sent walking through a dark room in hopes they will fall into a pit. When that doesn’t happen they are tied down on a table to watch the painfully slow descent of a swinging pendulum with a sharp-edged blade aimed at their stomach. Escaping from the blade did not mean freedom. The walls of the dungeon grow blistering hot first, then squeeze together to push them to the brink of the pit, before being saved at the very last second.

https://www.pit-pendulum.com/

From J. Aldric Gaudet on the obstacles he faced making the film:

Walking the tightrope between showing too much and showing too little, while at the same time complimenting Poe’s words without embellishing.

Playing on the Film Festival Streaming service later this month. You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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THE DEAD THAT LIVE, 9min., USA, Drama/Horror
Directed by Mark Oguschewitz
A lonely zombie must fight for his life during the zombie apocalypse

From the filmmaker:

Writer/Producer Mario Mabe brought me the 7-page script and I immediately fell in love with the last page and a half.

This is where the script turned into something different – it showed some real humanizing elements still present within the zombie character. Unlike most zombie films, this script took the zombie’s perspective and challenged us to understand him. The zombie wasn’t just a mindless body walking around trying to kill people. I thought that was interesting and wanted to explore that idea more.

Interview conducted by Matthew Toffolo

Playing on the Film Festival Streaming service later this month. You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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MEAN TO AN END is a winning short film that played at the Festival for Horror.

“A sexy young woman seeks out married men to seduce in a bar in an effort to get pregnant, but her intentions for the baby are unexpected.”

Director Statement

Horror from a female perspective can be disturbing. When I wrote this short script a few years ago, I did not anticipate directing it, but felt that I was the only one who truly understood the dynamics of the characters, so it became my directorial debut. Horror can be full of scary creatures and things that go bump in the night, but I find horror in the mundane, the everyday, and in the ways that humans harm each other. Audiences like to think that women are weak and innately good, but it is patently not true. Evil knows no gender. I would like to thank my amazing talented volunteer cast and crew who brought a very polarizing piece to life and committed utterly. I am thankful that they believed in the project and in the creative vision of a first-time director.

Film playing on the Film Festival Streaming service later this month. You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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THE DOOR was awarded BEST PERFORMANCES at the June 2022 LA Feedback Film Festival.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17055052/?ref_=nm_knf_i1

Director Statement

The Door is a proof of concept short film created in the hopes of finding funding or a distributor for a feature film that has been in the works for over 5 years. This short is an altered version of the beginning of the feature film. There are many more mysteries to unravel and explore.

This short in particular is incredibly personal. It’s essentially how I view the concept of death. After losing people very close to me in the winter of 2020, I made this as a way to cope with and accept what happened. This film is very special and personal to me. Although it will never be explicitly stated in the film, The Door is an allegory for death and my view of it. When someone dies, they’re taken from you. Out of the billions of people on the earth, at some point our loved ones will be “chosen”. They will be taken from us and sent into the unimaginable void that is death. Are they okay wherever they are? Will we ever see them again? To me it’s almost like they pass through a door, never to be seen again. Death itself is not evil, it is natural. It comes for us all no matter how we lived in life. No matter how good you are or how evil and vile you are, you will not be spared by your own mortality. I’ve always viewed horror as an exaggeration of our reality. Our everyday fears translated into things that are larger than life. I want to incorporate these very thoughts into the film.

Something as simple as a door can be terrifying if perceived in the right context. As odd as it sounds, I see a stationary door as the perfect embodiment of death itself. Wherever it may be, no matter if you see it throughout your life or only at the very end, it is always out there. Patiently waiting until it is your time to open it up and pass through.

This short film is dedicated to everyone we lost and those we wish to see again.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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SOLI DEO GLORIA was the winning short screenplay at the HORROR Underground Film Festival. Conversation with the writer followed by the screenplay reading.

Watch the script reading: https://www.wildsound.ca/videos/soli-deo-gloria

“In a rural early 20th century midwest American town, young August must face frequent abuse by his fundamentalist preacher father. As domestic troubles intensify with August’s family, so do visions of a monstrous presence chasing him. Can August escape both the source and the symbol of his trauma?”

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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“A true crime novelist teams up with a former FBI profiler to prove the existence of a serial killer that uses hypnosis to get others to confess to his crimes before and innocent man is executed.”

Interview with winning Horror Festival screenwriter Paul Mortsolf on the process writing the script. Followed by the best scene reading (audio version) of the screenplay.

You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN was the winner of BEST PERFORMANCES at the Feb. 2022 Horror Feedback Film Festival.

“Sarah finally has a date set up with her long-time crush, Paul. She’s determined to make it perfect, but her anxiety causes her to imagine every worst case scenario, no matter how outlandish.”

Conversation with the talented Emily Murnane on the making of the film.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/emily_murnane/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emilymurnane

Film also playing at the WILDsound TV app in April. You can sign up for the 7 day free trial at www.wildsound.ca (available on your streaming services and APPS). There is a DAILY film festival to watch, plus a selection of award winning films on the platform. Then it’s only $3.99 per month.

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THANK YOU FOR STAYING was the winner of BEST PERFORMANCES at the October 2021 HORROR Underground Film Festival. You can watch this film and the festival for FREE on Sunday all day HERE.

“A couple of city dwellers escaping the pandemic head up to a mountain rental hideaway and struggle to survive the night. Made in quarantine.”

Conversation with filmmaker/actor Ty Clancey on the making of this film. Co-star/wife Britta Clancey also joined to talk about the film.

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TERATOMA was the winner of BEST FILM at the October 2021 HORROR Underground Film Festival. You can watch this film and the festival for FREE on Sunday all day HERE.

“Two young people, a girl and a boy, will have to face a venereal disease after having sexual relations.”

Conversation with director/writer Jano Pita on the making of the film.

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DREAMER'S JOURNEY was the winner of BEST SHORT FILM at the August 2021 HORROR Film Festival. You can watch the festival and film HERE all day day for FREE.

Conversation with filmmaker Mitchell Branget on his process making this student Horror Film.

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GESTIRN was the winner of BEST THRILLER SHORT FILM at the August 2021 Thriller/Suspense Festival. You can watch the festival and film HERE all day day for FREE.

Conversation with director Fabio Stecher on the process making this film and using the excellent location he always wanted to shoot it.

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