Mournful Mediums Reviews – Blood In The Snow Film Festival 2024

Posted on by Kate DeJonge

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Tuesday night’s shorts lineup was filled with terror and hilarity in even proportions, making it a well-rounded viewing experience. Here are our thoughts on the Mournful Mediums:

Night Lab (2024)

“When a mysterious package arrives from one of the lab’s field research stations, a promising young researcher uncovers a conspiracy against her masterminded by her jealous boss. She soon finds herself having to grapple with her conscience before making a life or death decision.”

Writer/director Andrew Ellinas delivers an interesting take on the “research lab gone wrong” horror trope, featuring a unique alien creature that he created himself. The writing is excellent and the camera work feels full budget, but it’s the acting that sets this film apart from other attempts at low-budget sci-fi horror. David MacInnis plays Dr. Thorne, an angry man who refuses to allow a young female researcher (Lee Lawson as “Sarah”) to take the credit she deserves her for discovery in a South American jungle. Both actors excel in their roles, but MacInnis absolutely kills it as an over-the-top, egotistical misogynist. 

The alien creature is brilliantly done with a combination of practical and special effects, but the piece de resistance comes at the end of the film when we see what’s become of Dr. Thorne. Spectacularly shot, this will be a scene that fans remember. 

Dirty Bad Wrong (2024)

Dirty Bad Wrong

“Desperate to keep her promise to host the best superhero party for her 6-year-old, young mother Sid, a sex worker, takes extreme measures and books a last-minute client with a dark fetish.”

Writer/director Erica Orofino takes the desperation of a mother’s love to a whole new level in Dirty Bad Wrong. Sid (Michaela Kurimsky) will do anything to support her young son Jesse (Jack Greig), including keeping her sex worker appointments despite her childcare arrangements falling through. It’s bad enough to imagine how Sid must be feeling, knowing that her little boy is sitting on the other side of a stranger’s bedroom wall with headphones and a granola bar. When her John (Cody Ray Thompson) silently offers her an envelope loaded with cash that she refuses, though, it foreshadows worse times ahead for Sid. 

When it does happen, after we’ve been lulled into a comfortable pace and enjoyed an extended, tender dance scene between mother and son, it is like a sucker punch to the gut. That handsome John with the wad of cash has a very dark desire, and this is not the first time Sid has said yes to his wishes. The innocence of the down-and-out mother trying to make ends meet suddenly transforms into a heart-wrenching pain, with Sid allowing herself to be victimized so that she can keep a promise she made to her son. Orofino flips the dark switch with precision, giving viewers just enough gory detail to understand what’s going on before removing Sid from sight, and turning up the volume on the horrific sounds of what’s being done to her body. 

This film is a statement about what the 99% will do to protect their children, and the absolute depravity and disregard of some of the 1%. Erica Orofino is a creative to keep your eye on; she knows how to make you sit up and pay attention. 

Mourir En Silence (Mean Ends) 2024

Mean Ends

“A buried body, a missing sister, and an inquisitive neighbour make for a hell of an evening. And the sun isn’t close to setting on Eric’s sh*tty day.”

Mourir En Silence is a backwoods horror that packs a hefty plot twist that will fool most viewers right up until the reveal. Writer/director Emile Lavoie uses colour saturation and a layer of grime on his characters to give the illusion that the story is taking place in the type of rural area where one might expect to hear banjos. The effect works in part because of the point of entry to the story, with Eric (Hugo Giroux) dragging a bloody, headless body into a pit he’s just dug in his yard. When Melissa (co-writer Camille Mongeau) shows up at his door to demand that he come to her house to help her mother answer phone calls about Mel’s missing sister Sophie, she perpetuates the trope with her foul language and odd facial expressions. 

At Mel’s house, Eric is given mother Lucie’s (Pascale Monpetit) cell phone to watch while she naps and is fed a plate of pasta. From that point on, all hell breaks loose and brutality fills the screen. 

I can’t say much more here without revealing spoilers, but I can say that this is one of the more visceral short films I’ve seen this year. Every detail is carefully captured visually and audibly, ramping up the grotesquerie and tension before the truth is finally revealed. This one was a win for me, for its intensity, and for the surprising ending. 

 

Stuffy (2024)

“A young couple sets off in the middle of the night to bury their kid’s stuffed bunny, as one of them is convinced that the stuffy might be cursed.”

Stuffy is a horror short that probably should have been mediocre (based on its single filming location, cast of 2 people, and premise of a haunted stuffed rabbit), but it is one of my highlights of the BITS 2024 festival so far. Alexa Morgan and Tanner Zerr deliver Chris D’Alessandro’s witty script with perfect comedic timing, filling most of the 17-minute run time with an argument about whether or not their son’s stuffed rabbit is possessed. They’ve driven it out to a forest, in their pajamas, where Emily (Alexa Morgan) is determined to dismember the toy, burn it, and bury its ashes. Her husband Mark (Tanner Zerr) thinks she’s crazy. 

It could have been a slog to listen to them bicker while they hiked through the forest, but the dialogue is brilliant. It’s realistic, it’s funny, and the Evil Dead references are appreciated. There is gore, and possibly psychological horror (hallucinations), but it’s the chemistry between Morgan and Zerr that makes this film pop. Give it a whirl, it’s groovy. 

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Dungeon of Death (2024)

“Torturer Raullin loves a work challenge, especially if that challenge involves hurting people to extract information from them.”

I’m not sure I can stop laughing long enough to type out this review. I’ll be honest, the screener I received had some viewing quality issues, and for the first few moments, I thought this was going to be a cringey, low-budget mess. People. When I tell you that this is one of the funniest indie horror shorts I’ve ever seen, I might be underexpressing my joy. 

Dungeon of Death opens with a pair of feet shuffling along a dirt and stone floor, while their owner sings an absolute banger about being a torturer who loves his job. I found out later that it’s called “Raullin’s Rag”, written and performed by Keith Busher, the actor playing Raullin. Busher has a god-awful British accent and a pretty gnarly bald cap which were two elements that made me consider skipping this film altogether until I realized they were part of the shtick. Marty Feldman (Igor, in Young Frankenstein 1974) would have been proud of Busher’s rendition of the lurking dungeon dweller who can’t stop it with the awful puns and jokes. 

Raullin has Victor (Michael Masurkevitch) strapped to his table, rolls out his extensive set of rusty tools, and sets to work pulling Victor’s toenails out while he demands to know where Lady Minerva is, over, and over, and over again. Victor doesn’t seem bothered by this, though, uttering barely a protest. As Raullin ups the ante, slicing and chopping and pouring acid all over Victor, it becomes clear that Victor is not going to talk. The whole process is uproariously hilarious, as the torture becomes as ridiculous as the conversation between Raullin and Victor. 

The effects are gorey and fun, and so obviously fake that most weak-stomached viewers should be safe watching them. With lines like “Who needs feet, anyway?”, they’ll be laughing too hard to see it all, anyway. I don’t want to spoil the film so I’ll leave it at this: if you can only choose one short from Tuesday’s lineup and you enjoy Monty Python humour, please watch Dungeon of Death. You will not regret it. 

We watched the Mournful Mediums block of short films at Blood In The Snow Film Festival 2024.

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