THE 2004 EYESCREAM Festival finalists are: (in no particular order)
TOP SHELF

A moving account of a child beauty pageant winner, Abigail Whine, and her last few hours spent at the downtown toy store.
MARC FENNELL: beautiful tone, beautifully rendered... instantly gave a slight air of darkness to the innocent figures...
LINDA JAIVIN: Original animation aesthetic, and Abigail was hilarious... The toy shop was suitably weird and creepy, as was the owner... nice twist at the end.
Directed by Marta Tesoro, VIC, 5'45"

PHIZZOG

A young girl meets her fate after a nightmarish chase.
MARC: Awesome Gothic imagery... had a lot of layers to it...
LINDA: The concept is very clever and there was a real dream/nightmare sense to the journey/chase. Great ending...
Directed by Sally Gross, VIC, 5'48"

UNDER THE SKIN

A young mugger takes his victim's medication. Whilst under the influence, the deceased victim pays him a visit.
MARC: ...a real gift for telling stories, and coordination of visual-storytelling, with actors, peformances, and pace.
LINDA: Good effects, great concept - that of being pursued and tormented, and ultimately demented by guilt...
DES MANGAN: Bloody good job... one of my faves
Directed by Hugh Buttsworth, WA, 7'56"

SAM AND THE GREEN MEN

In search of his father, a young boy makes contact with an alien race that consequently threatens the existence of human kind.
MARC: Awesome. Cute characters, great sense of humour... great style, and awesome music... loved it.
LINDA: stylish, witty... adored the loving tribute to the old space and horror flicks of the 50s... a great surprise and the denouement hilarious... cleverly conceived and brilliantly executed.
Directed by Zen Rosenthal, WA, 7'26"

BORNE

Broken dreams, a dark alley, a girl's scream, the smell of blood - can't be good, or can it?
We follow a vampire's short journey as it leads into an explosive martial arts battle.
MARC: Great post-production. Great lighting... no more Angel or Buffy for you!
Directed by Rick Pitman, NSW, 6'

INTERCHANGE

Steady tapping of high-heels awaken a still and shrouded terminus.
MARC: ... the whole film oozed tension, very skillfully put together and you had one of the most original endings i've seen in a short film. Awesome.
DES: Nicely structured and put together... Builds tension beautifully.
Directed by Michael Chrisoulakis, NSW, 7'27"

LUCK
On this particular place, in this unusual place, two unlikely characters collide. By luck or by fate? Life and the universe has its own internal workings, as they are about to discover...
LINDA: Clever dialogue, great acting, and really captivating and atmospheric camera work... a great ambiance of danger, risk, and eroticism.
DES: Plays like an old Twilight Zone episode... well made and acted...
Directed by Rene Hernandez, NSW, 5'15"

AN AUSSIE HORROR FILM
Ever wonder why there aren't many Australian horror films? Here's why...
MARC: ...totally unpretentious and genuinely funny.
DES: Great idea...
Directed by Glenn Majurey, NSW, 3'

THE FAN

The deadliest of all love triangles: a man, his fan, and a hot woman.
MARC: Great blend of comedy and storytelling. Good work on bringing the fan to life - it really felt like a character.
LINDA: Funny and creepy - I was quite scared by that fan.
DES: Very original... clever idea.
Directed by Jamie Lewis, NSW, 7'

TOOTH FOR TOOTH

Grace and Stephanie have never been friends. Their sisterly bickering has evolved into a perilous game of scheming and vengeance. However, this time Stephanie has taken it too far and her paranoia takes over as she fearfully awaits Grace’s retribution.
LINDA: I liked the poetry/narration... moments of real horror.
Directed by Tonnette Stanford, NSW, 7'

AN UNWELCOME OLYMPICS VIEWING INTERRUPTION
What could be worse than Jehovas bashing on your door? A very unwelcome Olympics viewing interruption.
MARC: A simple short-film story, told well.
Directed by Katie Byrne, NSW, 5'

ZZZZ

Horatio Stafford has an unwelcome visitor during the night...
MARC: ...treated schlock exactly how is should be treated...
DES: My kind of bent, black comedy!
LINDA: Points for humour, acting and the (end)...
Directed by James Findley, NSW, 3'30"

THE GRATEFUL

June finally has a man, and a ring around her finger to prove it. When she invites her friends around to celebrate, things turn nasty.
MARC: Great start. Great style.
DES: Very well shot... pretty bloody good.
Directed by Andrew Wholley, NSW, 6'46"

LUCID BEING
George awakens from an horrific nightmare to find that his whole world has twisted into a bloody mass of severed limbs, rotting flesh, and zombie carnage. But is everyone zombies, or has George just forgotten to take his medication?
MARC: great visual panache... "Donnie Darko does Dawn of the Dead"
LINDA: Good scary horror and effects!
DES: Good disturbing images and nice use of subliminals...
Directed by Joshua Long, QLD, 6'

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A review by Kyla Ward
from Tabula Rasa

Boo-oo-oo, ask any ghoul,
Halloween is coo-ool!

And with the third annual EyeScream Short Film Festival, it certainly is. Although the origin of the above song, played with sing-along graphics to warm up the audience, is probably best left a mystery.

I have attended every EyeScream so far, and it just keeps on getting better. This year the venue was the Chauvel cinema in Paddington, where a plentiful audience gathered, some in costume, others insisting they were simply in street wear. Our hostess for the evening, Vashti Hughes, did her best to get things moving promptly, but someone kept interrupting her by calling her mobile and asking, did she like scary movies? We got to see this impolite person at about the halfway point, when he pursued her around the cinema in mask and robe. There was some of that up on screen, of course, but death has many guises, ranging from a vampiric Buddhist monk to a pleasant-faced gentleman in a nightclub.

This year's 14 finalists made up a very strong field; possibly the best selection yet. Furthermore, for the first time this year there was a "Second Scoop" screening for the best of the rest the following Sunday, and the finalists themselves are to tour...

...This year, two things struck me overall. The first is just how widespread digital effects are becoming. I'm talking the kind that would once have been seen only in blockbuster movies or high budget episodes of "Buffy". The second was the presence of humour, or at least dark wit, in nearly every film. James Findlay's "ZZZZ", for instance, won the Audience Choice award with a lethally funny twist to a universal situation. "An Unwelcome Olympics Viewing Interruption" by Katie Byrne (who directed last year's "$150.00 Profit Margin") was simply hilarious, and won the UBS Media School Encouragment Award. And the stalker in Andrew Wholley's "The Grateful" wore a very well-known face...

"Interchange" by Michael Chrisoulakis won first prize. It would be dangerous to go into details, except that it was atmospheric, beautifully shot and edited -- and had the audience laughing yet again. You know the kind of laughter I mean, don’t you? The feeling that you probably shouldn't be laughing at something like this.

I must also mention "The Fan" by Jamie Lewis. Now, although deranged fans are quite common in the horror genre, they don't often have rotating blades and plug into an electric outlet. I can't explain this one, I only know it worked.

Two animations made the finals this year, both involving little girls getting into serious trouble. Marta Tesoro's "The Top Shelf" had a grotesquely pretty cartoonish style, that suited its moral tale. Sally Gross's "Phizzog" won the Eat Carpet award, which includes screening on the program of that name. It was much more spectral and ambiguous, with jaw-dropping imagery and an atmospheric soundtrack.

That's the third thing I noticed overall. The mark of a professional production (as in, a crew who are really, truly on top of what they are doing) over the amateur is the sound. Although none of the finalists had actually bad sound, those that had good sound definitely stood out.

At last, with the prizes awarded and the Masked Killer finally bludgeoned to death, it was time to move across the road to the Paddington RSL for the post-screening party. Another of this year's innovations and a welcome one, with absinth cocktails, inflatable skeletons and jack o'lanterns, and a DJ who started with Alice Cooper's "Black Widow" and went on from there. All in all, EyeScream III was an excellent event and one that gives me a chilly little glow of hope for the future of horror in this country.

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