Every House Is Haunted
Maya (Kate Cobb) and her husband Danny (Kevin Bigley) move into a new house that their real estate agent said was haunted by friendly ghosts in writer/director Bryce McGuire’s short film Every House Is Haunted. Danny doesn’t think it’s a problem, but Maya is somewhat concerned. When he goes away on a business trip, she encounters the ghost of a boy (Emmanuel Wood) who died at age seven of carbon monoxide poisoning. After bonding with the ghost, he introduces her to others who inhabit the home. McGuire goes for something far deeper than mere shocks and starts in this thoughtful, sensitive exploration of a woman who has suffered a tragic loss.
We Forgot About the Zombies
Writer/director Chris McInroy’s frenetic horror comedy short We Forgot About the Zombies finds two friends, one of whom was bitten by a member of the living dead, taking temporary shelter in a place with bottles marked with “c–e,” with the missing middle letters unclear. Assuming that the word is “cure,” the men find themselves dealing with decidedly offbeat situations. The humor blends well with the goopy, gloppy, goings-on, resulting in a three-minute short that is a blast.
Dead Enders
Another SXSW short that deals out the laughs, lunacy, and gruesome gags is Dead Enders, codirected by Fidel Ruiz-Healey and Tyler Walker, who also cowrote the screenplay with Conor Murphy. This Texas-set creature feature finds Luckee’s Petroleum and Frack Shack employee Maya (Skarlett Redd) and her manager Walt (Jeff Murdoch) being caught smack dab in the middle of an invasion by mind-controlling parasites. Formerly content with just punching the clock at a job that her manager urges her to break free from to achieve greater things, Maya must decide between giving in or fighting back against the evil bugs. Redd is terrific as the apathetic clerk and she and Murdoch have great chemistry together, with Lilliana Winkworth and Joseph Rene providing strong comic support as police officers. Dead Enders delivers the goods as it nods to classic horror and science fiction films while serving up hilarious monster movie thrills and chills in its exploration of soul-killing jobs.
EVERY HOUSE IS HAUNTED, WE FORGOT ABOUT THE ZOMBIES, and DEAD ENDERS screened as part of SXSW, which ran March 10–19 in Austin, Texas.
