This year’s batch of short movies (my favorite part of the festival) was pretty good. There were four groups of shorts spread out over the 3-day festival and we managed to see three of them so far (with plans to see the fourth group sometime after I write this today). Some of my favorites are below:
Group 1
The Boarder (USA, 9 minutes) - A strange man comes to stay with the Parker family and only young Charlie knows his evil intent. This was one of my favorite movies in the first group. It had a nice pace and a creepy feel to it.
Sorry About That Folks (USA, 8 minutes) – An interesting tale of Lovecraftian self-discovery fraught will peril.
Old Time Sake (USA, 18 minutes) - An old friend shows up on at the main character’s doorstep babbling about his wife having the eyes of an old man. This is loosely based on Lovecraft’s “The Thing on the Doorstep.”
Group 2
Lovecraft’s Pillow (USA, 10 minutes) – A struggling writer is looking for inspiration in order to get published in his favorite horror magazine. Much to his surprise, he finds Lovecraft’s pillow at a pawn shop and hopes the writer weird fantasies will open his own writer’s block. Nothing good can come of this, of course.
Group 3
CollectAll and Hyde (animated, USA, 7 minutes) - The best way I can think to describe this creative animated short is Dr. Seuss meets Lovecraft. It’s a story about a creature who collects things and is very jealous and guarded about his things. He suspects his neighbor is out to steal from him. The film is done in stop-motion animation style and was very well done.
Binding Silence (USA, 22 minutes) – An employee working in a used bookstore finds an old book he can’t seem to put down. He loves reading it and reading it and reading it and reading it. Please don’t stop him from reading it. This was well done. The festival crowd really liked it too.
From Beyond (animated, USA, 10 minutes) – This was one of the best animated shorts at the festival this year. It follows Lovecraft’s story of the same name pretty closely. The sound and music combined with the camera angles created the atmosphere for this very creepy little animated movie. I enjoyed it thoroughly.
The Lens (Holland, not sure of the length) – A documentarian discovers the antique movie camera he has been using has captured his soul. This film looked as if it were filmed with an antique camera and had a very creepy feel to it. The ending was a shocker. It was subtitled from Dutch to English, wich actually added to the documentary feel and seemed to give the movie more credibility.
Justine and I are looking forward to the fourth and final group of shorts today. We’ve both had a great time so far visiting Cannon Beach and exploring Portland with John and Robbin. It’s been in the upper 60s to lower 70s since we’ve been here and that has been a welcome change from Houston’s muggy 90s last week.
This festival always inspires me to try to get something published. I’ve been kicking around the idea for a short story for about a year or so now, but haven’t written anything down yet (probably because I haven’t had the time).
I’ve enjoyed seeing all the weird people who attend the festival each year. It reminds me that I can easily identify with the weird fringe element of society. Science fiction nerds, horror geeks and wacky gamers are strongly represented here with oodles of cross-over and line-blurring between the genres. For the most part, this bizarre little community is very accepting of oddballs no matter what your interests may be. That’s nice. People show up to the festival in costumes and make-up and crazy outfits and nobody bats an eye. It’s all quite normal here.
We were joking yesterday that we felt a little out of place because we looked so normal.
It’s been a great festival so far, but it’s not over yet…
- Dave
