Article contributed by Daniel A
Audio Guide (HONOURABLE MENTION)
While listening to an audio guided tour in an art gallery Audrey (Emma Wright) becomes bored, until she realises that her recorder will give her detailed information about anything she points it at. She starts with other patrons at the gallery, the audio guide informing her of their ages, jobs, dreams, and then futures. When the recorder tells her of a woman’s future murder at the hands of her boyfriend, Audrey flees the gallery after her, but is unable to say anything to warn the woman. Realising the gravity of what she has in her hands, she points it at herself – but does she want to hear her future?
Darkly humorous, Audio Guide becomes increasingly frantic and claustrophobic under director Chris Elena as Audrey struggles with the enormity of what she has discovered. Nyx Calder is cathartic as the pleasantly monotone voice of the tour guide, elevating a clever way for writer Lee Zachariah to play with the tone of the film. Audrey’s ultimate decision regarding whether or not she wants to know her fate will leave audiences pondering what they’d do in the same situation.
Hypernova
After winning an award for her performance at work, Cassiopeia (Natalie Lisinska), who wears a spacesuit, returns home dishevelled from a night of partying. Her husband (Matthew MacFadzean) asks to know where she was, but she doesn’t respond. She goes into work where her co-workers enthusiastically congratulate her on her award. She flashes back to the night before, where she shares a moment with her co-worker (Ben Frederick), who also wears a spacesuit, despite him being at the party with his girlfriend. Cassie returns home, and her husband leaves, still angry. She looks at pictures of her co-worker on her phone before using her award from work to puncture a hole in her space suit helmet.
Writer/director Tate Young paints a story of isolation, that is, as the genre category states, otherworldly. Cassie is detached from her husband and co-workers, her suit weighing her with a sense of isolation. She longs for a connection, and only feels it when she is with her co-worker who also wears a spacesuit. The scenes in which the pair are together are encompassed by images of space and stars, signifying Cassiopeia’s namesake – the Greek myth of a mother who became a stellar constellation. While the ending does not result in the freedom she hopes for, her rejection of her suit allows her the space to breathe.
Just Be
Donatella (Krystal Ellsworth) and her younger sister Ellie (Clementine Lea Spieser) are kidnapped after a shopping trip. The pair wake up on a bed in a large basement-esque room with their hands bound. A woman walks into the room and tells them not to talk as she has clients coming and they don’t like it when they talk. Three men arrive and are impressed with the girls. As the men pay for their time with them, Dontella tells Ellie that they’ll have to do something they don’t like but that they don’t have a choice. Two of the men return, unaware that the girls possess abilities and won’t let the men touch them.
A neon-lit nightmare directed by Sarah Koteles, Just Be stops just short of its disturbing sex-trafficking narrative to become a surprise story of young, empowered women. Writer Michael Paull builds an impending sense of dread before turning the tables and placing the girls in power, with an equally disturbing use of their supernatural powers as they make their would-be attackers pay.
Metamorphosis (TOP PICK)
Zoe (Sophie Zucker) wakes up to her boyfriend, Greg (Phil Matarese) watching her. Greg is a fly, and he tries to make a move on Zoe, but she tells him she’s not in the mood. He tells her he feels like their relationship has felt weird lately and says to make it up to her he’ll cook and clean for a date night. Greg does the bare-minimum, and Zoe rings her friend Katie complaining about her relationship, and Katie suggests they mix things up. Zoe tries choking him during sex, which Greg does not like. The next morning Greg wakes and Zoe tells him she thought it would be easier if she packed his things for him, and the pair argue about their relationship.
Metamorphosis is bizarrely relatable to anyone who has woken up one day and felt like the person they are in a relationship with has changed. It’s a very heavy-handed, and hilarious, metaphor that Greg (who is puppeteered by Bill Bryan) has become a fly whose every action is irksome to Zoe. Zucker and Matarese carry the silliness easily, Zoe completely unaware of her own annoying tendencies, and Greg whose high man-baby voice works perfectly with the fly puppet design.
Pipo & Blind Love
In a world where people’s emotions are controlled by a gauge on their necks, Pipo (Anatole Zangs), whose gauge is full, becomes infatuated with a woman (Solange Frejean) he sees sitting on a bench. Her gauge is empty, and he tries to summon emotions of reciprication in her through creative endeavours like puppetry and music.
The dystopian setting becomes beautiful under the wide-eyed antics of Zangs’ Pipo, the dust of the mines becoming confetti. Pipo & Blind Love is a heart-warming story with a bittersweet message. Pipo is successful in his mission to bring happiness to the cold world, but in doing so loses himself.
Turducken
At a Christmas dinner party Bob (Joe Chrest) is served Turducken, a chicken inside a duck, inside a turkey. He thoroughly enjoys the meal, forgoing his table manners to the dismay of his wife Karen (Lana Young). After this he becomes obsessed, he makes his daughter an ‘Orkiape’, a grape inside a kiwi, inside an orange. From there he moves onto household items making babooshka-esque dolls out of everything he can find, his obsession taking over his life.
A darkly-humorous film that will be relatable to anyone who has ever questioned their family members’ weird obsessions. Chrest is perfect as the dutiful neglected husband turned obsessive psychopath. Turducken revels in its silliness as it slowly increases the bizarreness of Bob’s creations up until its ridiculously macabre ending.
