The Final Girls Berlin Film Festival takes place annually at City Kino Wedding. Named after the ‘final girl’ horror trope, the festival focuses on horror cinema that is directed, written, or produced by women and non-binary filmmakers.
This year’s feature film lineup included We’re All Going to the World’s Fair, Hellbender, and Good Madame (Mlungu Wam). Alongside these were a number of short films, each of which was streamed within a category such as ‘Queer Horror’, ‘Envy’, ‘Social Ills’, and ‘Menacing Presence’.
We watched just some of the films on offer at the festival and were blown away by the quality of many of these feature-length and short films. Here are five gruesomely fun shorts from this year’s festival.
Words by Isobel Pankhurst
1. Demon Juice (dir. Shannon Brown)
Demon Juice follows a group of women who go on a weekend getaway to a quaint vacation town. In their rental they discover a decades-old party drink, the titular Demon Juice, that is far more dangerous than it seems.
The cast of characters in this short are your general horror film caricatures; there’s the organised ‘Mom’ friend, the chaotic one, the one who can’t get anywhere without her partner, and the pretty one. The relationships between these women are what you’d expect from these dynamics; the organised and the chaotic one butt heads, the one who won’t go anywhere without her partner attempts to bring him along on the trip, etc,.
Demon Juice is full of funny moments. After Debra (Madeline Wagner) drinks the demon juice, the rest of the women begin preparing to go out for the night—their getting ready ‘montage’ is intercepted with shots of Debra vomiting up hair and convulsing.
Demon Juice is fun, and it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see it become a feature film one day, with hopefully more fleshed-out characters.
2. Girls Night In (dir. Alison Roberto)
Girls Night In is a satirical horror-comedy short, the basis of which is the Bechdel Test used to examine works of fiction and their portrayals of women. The test famously asks if there are two named women who talk about something other than a man, but Girls Night In playfully flips this and instead asks—just what is the weirdest place two women could be arguing over ‘some dude?’
The answer to this question is a home invasion in which the guy in question is a masked killer attempting to murder the two women. But he is at least 6ft and clearly athletic…
Girls Night In is a hilarious ten-minute-long romp, with witty one-liners and over-the-top characters. Becca and Delaney, also known as Bec and Del (see what they did there?), are played by Jess Adams and Skylar Benton who absolutely shine in these comedic roles, with just the right level of ridiculousness necessary for the story to work. If you watch just one short film this year, make sure it’s Girls Night In.
3. Verified (dir. Ali Chappell)
Emily in Paris meets Fear the Walking Dead in horror actress Ali Chappell’s directorial debut. Verified follows aspiring social-media influencer Nicky (Arielle Edwards) who, while live-streaming, is bitten by a stranger and proceeds to stream her transformation into a zombie.
Covering the sometimes toxic nature of internet fame and the culture surrounding online influencers, this short shows how as Nicky’s platform grows and she gets ever-closer to the fame she desires her health continues to further deteriorate. She continues to ignore comments telling her to seek medical advice and her followers continue to increase, in a morbid look at how people are drawn to disasters.
Alongside the story and acting, another highlight of Verified is the make-up and visual effects. As Nicky’s health worsens and she slowly becomes a zombie her appearance also deteriorates as she continues to bleed from her wounds and begins to look like your classic run-of-the-mill zombie. For a lower budget independent short these visuals are done remarkably well.
Verified is a funny, yet morbid, look at the world of social media influencers.
4. Protection Spell (dir. Maren Moreno)
Protection Spell is a delightfully disgusting tale of a witch who has been stricken with a mysterious vaginal ailment and must now call upon the help of a powerful hag.
With at times quite gross imagery you’ll find yourself squirming in discomfort but also in awe of how pretty some of these images can be. Using both flowers and condoms the visuals of the film becomes both innocent and overtly sexual.
The story is told with no dialogue and just background music which adds to the bizarre atmosphere of the short. And running at just seven minutes long this film is short, but sweet-ish.
One thing’s for sure, you’ll never see anything else like Protection Spell.
5. Gay Teen Werewolf (dir. Andy Rose Fidoten)
Starting with an iconic reference to Twilight’s “I know what you are” scene, Gay Teen Werewolf follows the story of—well, a gay teenage werewolf. The titular werewolf has become somewhat disillusioned with the werewolf community, seemingly due in part to their treatment of outsiders. She begins to find herself drawn closer to the mysterious Cassandra, who she swears could be a vampire.
In the world of Gay Teen Werewolf, the characters queer identities are somewhat accepted, it’s the lycanthropy that isn’t. The high school, instead of an LGBTQ+ club or a GSA (gay-straight alliance) has an LGBTQWW+ alliance suggesting that werewolves are seen as part of the queer umbrella. With a runtime of just 14 minutes, the rest Gay Teen Werewolf‘s worldbuilding is understandably limited.
The events of the short culminate in the school dance, which our protagonist doesn’t want to attend at first but is then convinced to by Cassandra. The night leads to heartbreak, as many teenage school dances are wont to do. But as the film ends, the gay teenage werewolf starts to find herself on the brink of self-acceptance.
Gay Teen Werewolf uses lycanthropy folklore to tell a tender story of teenage angst and self-acceptance.
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