This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.
Welcome to the next installment of our Fantasia Shorts Roundup (first installment here), where we highlight a selection of short films appearing in this year’s slate. In this installment, we will discuss Bullet Time, Em & Selma Go Griffin Hunting, and Steak Dinner.
Eddie Alcazar’s Bullet Time is a surreal animated short film that also serves as the pilot episode for the upcoming animated series. This episode, sharing the title of the series, encapsulates the effect of combining 90’s cartoons such as Ren & Stimpy, Rocko’s Modern Life, and Courage the Cowardly Dog into a Cronenberg-type creature and letting it loose in all of its unnecessary grotesque fashion. While Alcazar can be applauded for showcasing a fading art form in traditionally drawn animation, Bullet Time is merely a Danny Elfman-themed montage of button-mashing video games and inhaling gross food for the sake of mindless shock appeal.
Filmed in black and white, Alex Thompson’s Em & Selma Go Griffin Hunting is a bold, atmospheric tale following mother Selma (Pollyanna McIntosh) and daughter Em (Milly Shapiro) as they venture to hunt griffins as part of their community’s rite of passage in the 1930s. This intense short immensely captures Em’s justified hesitation and emotional turmoil towards this barbaric ritual, while still understanding Selma’s need to belong to her community in great detail. The film’s visual effects heighten this short as the meticulous design of the griffins provide immediate danger and a chilling presence to this mother-daughter adventure through their feral nature. Explained by the mother as a result of continuous inbreeding, these griffins horrifically showcase their deformed, vulture-like features that enforce Em’s courage in wanting to protect all creatures no matter what. Rounding out the film with gorgeous cinematography, Thompson’s film provides a glance into a dark fantasy world with enough emotional drive, surprisingly detailed production design, and high-quality visual effects to keep audiences captured in this brief world.
Nathan Ginter’s Steak Dinner is a dark comedy thriller following Taylor (Ruby Cruz), who brings home an unsettlingly big snail that she wounded on the road. When her girlfriend, Casey (Lucy Idella), dislikes the idea of keeping this grotesque pet, she tries to dispose of it in accidentally cruel fashions. Ginter plants the initial ideas of trust in relationships and the common problem of partners handling sensitive situations behind the other one’s back. The short film scratches the surface of these ideas just enough so that the Fantasia audience can stay invested in their relationship while still finding outrageous humor in the inevitable downfall of the poor snail.
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