TOP 5 INTERNATIONAL SHORTS THAT KILLED IT AT TORONTO AFTER DARK

It was very difficult for us here on FERNTV to select our top 5 international shorts that were screened at the Toronto After Dark Film Festival because they were all amazing.  We did take our time to select the five that we thought were worth mentioning and strong.  Aaron D. Alexander who plays the bartender in Bar Fight displays a strong performance in this action-packed short.  After he closes up the bar, a gang of scary thugs break into the bar not only looking for money but perhaps some blood.  What you end up witnessing in this film are fantastic choreographed fighting scenes that are influenced by Aaron D. Alexander himself.  Directed by Benjamin R. Moody of Blue Goggles Films will have you looking forward to what is coming up next from this crew from deep in the heart of Texas.

www.barfightmovie.com

Coming from Switzerland is the film Puzzle by director Vincenzo Allelo which is a straight-up mind fucking experience.  This short film follows a woman in her apartment who finds pieces of a puzzle and continuously pieces them together.  Puzzle has that Wes Craven‘s Scream like feel to it without any of the phone calls but a lot of escalating terror.   Vincenzo Allelo makes your imagination run wild just like its main character who solves the puzzle until its last piece.  Puzzle is brilliant and is the one true template of what horror films will look like in the future.

https://www.facebook.com/Vincenzo.4iello/

Having watched this film at Fantasia and again at Toronto After Dark Film Festival, our hatred for the character of Maggie May played by Lulu McClatchy grew even further.  Maggie May is not interested in anything and when her estranged sister Sam, played by Katrina Mathers, comes to try to reconnect with her after the death of her mother, things start to truly go downhill for Sam.  To the audience, Maggie May is useless and is passive even when there is a cry for help.  She frustrates the audience and true hatred grows within our hearts for this character which is what we think the reaction director Mia’Kate Russell wants from us.  You won’t believe how much of a strong character Maggie May is even though she is passive and chooses not to do anything with her life.

www.maggiemaythemovie.com

La Noria is an animation film about a grieving boy who is shown sympathy by monsters whom he ironically runs away from until he gets himself up in the attic.  This film is an online collaboration of artists and it goes to show you that great content can be made this way.  The monsters in the film will give you a shake or two even though it is animation.  They do remind us of the monster in Pan’s Labyrinth so there’s a little Guillermo del Toro influence in this short animated film.  La Noria is in heavy rotation on the festival circuit and you will see why when you watch the trailer above.

https://www.lanoriafilm.com/

The Haunted Swordsman is the latest in acclaimed puppeteer Kevin McTurk‘s Spirit Cabinet series.  In this installment, a ronin samurai, voiced by Jason Scott Lee, is out for vengeance with a severed head, voiced by James Hong, as his guide.  We were caught with our pants down in this film as we thought there were real actors in the film and it took us halfway through the film to figure this out.  That is how realistic Kevin McTurks’s work is and we can only laugh at ourselves for that but this story is no laughing matter.  The Haunted Swordsman cuts strong like a samurai.