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The Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival 2023 Report: Part 1
Image Credit: Buffalo Dreams
The Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival Report: Part 1
The Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival recently celebrated its tenth year of existence this past August (August 18th-24th, to be exact) at a new location, the majestic Dipson Amherst Theater in Buffalo, and over its seven day run showed 16 feature films and 63 short films, 79 films in total. I was able to attend two non-consecutive days of the festival (day 2 and day 7) and managed to see just about everything that was shown (I missed a few short films in the first block of programming). My plan for this report is to split it into two parts, with each part focusing on one day each. The short films I saw will appear first, followed by the features. Each movie, regardless of length, will get a number rating (out of ten). On my day 1, which was day 2 of the festival, I saw 14 short films and two feature length films.
And so, without any further what have you, what exactly did I see on my first day of the Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival 2023 edition?
The Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival 2023 Report: Part 1
Short Films
Sucks to be the Moon: This animated short is part weird beard foul mouthed Adult Swim cartoon and part hilarious animated music video where the sun, the moon, and various planets show up and act like people (and by that I mean they all have thoughts and feelings and whatnot). The voice work is superb, too. I think my favorite bit in this short is when Pluto shows up and complains about how it used to be considered a planet. Very funny stuff.
Rating: 10/10
Middle Watch: Set during World War II, this British animated short is chock full of mood and atmosphere as it tells the story of a sailor who, while watching for danger in the middle of the night, ends up experiencing all sorts of bizarre things. The big question, though, is are these things the sailor experiences real or are they all in his head? There’s a great sequence in this short where the sailor, while looking at an old photo, accidentally drops it in the water below. How is he going to get it back? Will he be able to get it back? I liked this, but at the same time I would like to see it again to see what I missed about it (because I’m sure I missed something). I’d also love to know how this animated short was put together.
Rating: 8/10
Innermost: The best way to describe this animated short, which I believe is from China, is “stop motion kung fu.” And the kung fu is, at times, breathtaking. The short tells the story, as far as I can tell (there’s no dialogue or captions), of an old man (or maybe old woman) that has to protect a special box from a young assassin. The martial arts on display in this animated short are just as good as any live action martial arts movie you’ve ever seen. I’m not sure about the sort of “sci-fi twist” that happens at the end, but the majority of Innermost is superb. This is another animated short I’d love to know more about in terms of how it was made. Just how much actual “stop motion” was used to make this?
Rating: 9/10
Smush: I’m not sure I fully grasp if this animated short is supposed to be about anything beyond being weird. Basically, it’s about a big press machine thing in a room that smashes things (crushes them, smushes them). We see the machine pulverize multiple food items (like a cheese puff, a meatball, a Twinkie. It tries to flatten a pizza but it can’t because, as a pizza, it’s already flat), multiple items that are meant to be homages to things like Star Trek and The Lord of the Rings, a rock, and a big bone. We also see the machine smash a unicorn and the unicorn turns into a bunch of butterflies. Smush is fun but, again, I’m not sure I get it. I did like it, though, even if I don’t get it.
Rating: 7/10
The Smile: This animated short from the Netherlands is a sort of parody of a documentary about an old Hollywood star, with the old Hollywood star in question as a talking crocodile that starred in various horror movies back in the day and ate his female co-stars (that’s his gimmick). We see a few talking head interviews with various actors the crocodile appeared with, all of which are weirdly hilarious (the whole short is weirdly hilarious). The crocodile’s Hollywood star life goes like just about every Hollywood star’s life (sudden fame, there are awards, then the rumors start, the star hits rock bottom, and then there’s a bit of redemption). The best part of this is accepting that there’s a talking crocodile in the world and that there are certain women in the world who want to be devoured by him. It’s such a bizarre idea and yet brilliant at the same time. If you like Hollywood parodies you will like The Smile.
Rating: 8/10
First Men in the Moon/Journey to the Center of the Earth/20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: I decided to lump all of these shorts together as they played as a sort of mega block of movies by Brett Piper alongside Piper’s wonderful feature Redneck Mutants (more on that later). First Men in the Moon, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, based on the stories of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, are wonderful and whimsical and just plain fun. All three shorts feature the same sort of style of stop motion animation but the various characterizations are different enough for each one to stand out. Each short distills the basic plot of each classic story into a movie that lasts about ten minutes or so. The voice work, the music, the way the stop motion animation flows in each short, it’s all top notch stuff. You can tell that each short was a true blue labor of love and that Piper loves the source material. I’m curious to know how many more shorts Piper has like these ones either completed or in the pipeline. I’d love to see more.
Rating: 10/10 for each of them
Trail of Terror: This short is basically a trailer for a potential upcoming horror movie by Ken Rowe. The trailer lasts about a minute and features a young woman being chased by a bigfoot/sasquatch monster in the woods. The monster suit looks fantastic. Hopefully this potential movie actually happens. The world needs a good, low budget, indie “bigfoot-monster-in-the-woods” flick chock full of monsters and gore and people being ripped apart and whatnot.
Rating: 7/10
Fortune Teller: This short film by Julia Tutko-Balena (she wrote it, directed it, and stars in it alongside Petra Denison) starts out like you would expect a story about a woman going to see a psychic with a, well, woman going to see a psychic. There’s a real sense of mystery as to what exactly is going on with the back and forth between the woman and the psychic. Is the psychic a “real” psychic or is this all just a bunch of hooey? What sort of scam, if any, is this psychic pulling on this woman? And then, a bit after the middle of the short, the tone shifts dramatically and there’s something truly sinister in the air. I wasn’t prepared for that shift, and even after me telling you that there’s a shift, if you happen to see Fortune Teller you won’t be ready for the shift, either. Expertly done.
Rating: 9/10
LifeQuest: Written and directed by and featuring Richard Rounello, this is an ambitious sci-fi short about a futuristic mega corporation that has developed a technology that allows people to live a “complete 3D life” without actually living it. It sort of reminded me of the premise behind Total Recall, where people can have memories implanted, but with the added layer of corporate greed and a sort of supreme social exploitation that’s advertised as a corporate good deed. That exploitation, when you find out what it’s really all about and who this LifeQuest company is testing its technology on, will make your goddamn skin crawl. This short has tremendous production value and comes off like a pilot for a potential TV show of some sort (it also works as its own thing. Again, when you find out what sort of exploitation is going on you will no doubt become outraged by the whole thing). If Rounello does manage to make it as a TV show it will be interesting to see what else the LifeQuest company is up to (because you know that they’re into more unsavory stuff) and how the company’s technology changes people’s lives. Heck, LifeQuest will change society, or at least that’s its hope. Great, unsettling stuff.
Rating: 10/10
Follower: This thriller short is absolutely fantastic and brilliantly simple. Two people in a room, one is a cop investigating a cult (Patrick Devaney) and the other is a cult member that likely has information the cop needs (Heather Drew). There’s tension, there’s mystery, and there’s an absolutely insane twist that will shock the crap out of you. I won’t give away what the big hooha twist is, but I will say that you should pay attention to how the back and forth of the interrogation is framed. Ask yourself why there are so many extreme close-ups. Writer/director Scott W. Perry uses the short’s 14 minute runtime wisely, doesn’t waste a second, and will definitely blow your mind when it’s over. And Devaney and Drew are just amazing. Superb entertainment through and through.
Rating: 10/10
InHuman Resources: A high concept horror comedy that also plays like a pilot for a potential TV show, InHuman Resources is all about a secret government agency that basically manages the existence of monsters and keeps monsters away from humans as best it can. The agency employs a guy that’s also a werewolf and a mummy that likes to smoke weed, and we see them try to keep a female vampire’s existence under wraps. To say that things don’t go smoothly would be a serious understatement. The performances from the leads are decent, and the writing is generally sharp and funny, although the weed humor, at least to me, doesn’t play as well as the other goofy stuff that we see. The special effects are decent, including a nice werewolf transformation, and there’s a pretty good fight between the werewolf agent and a vampire towards the end. Be sure to stick around through the credits as there’s a post-credits sequence that helps set up the concept as a potential TV show. I’d love to know what other sorts of monsters the InHuman Resources team have to manage. Are there zombies out there? Bigfoot creatures? Gill men? Directed by Gabriel Petersen.
Rating:7.5/10
MissUnderstood Monster: Written and directed by Lindsay Serrano, MissUnderstood Monster is a laugh riot about a young woman (Heather Drew) who has to deal with a wacked out creature that only she can see. This creature, played by Heather Buckley, sort of resembles the imaginary monster that Howie Mandel played in Little Monsters, but this creature isn’t imaginary, at least not to Drew’s Laura. Laura’s creature is very, very real, and she seems to have to deal with her once a month. I will admit, as a dumbass American male, I had no idea what Laura’s creature represented until the very end, and even then it didn’t hit me as to why that was important, but then I thought about what we see Laura go through and then it all made sense. I then laughed quite a bit (I mean, I laughed throughout the movie, but once I found out what was really going on the movie was suddenly even funnier). Women will likely “get” what’s going on way before the males in the audience. Drew does a great job as Laura, trying to hold her life together while dealing with the Buckley creature (it’s rough, especially the whole part about the pants). And Buckley is a force of nature as the creature, chewing the scenery and knowing how to make the creature charmingly annoying (the bit where she licks Laura’s phone is messed up, though. What the hell, man?). I loved MissUnderstood Monster. A definite must see if it’s playing at a movie festival near you (or whenever it becomes available to the general public, which I assume it will at some point in the near future. It’s too good a short to just disappear after its festival run).
Rating: 10/10
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Feature Films
Redneck Mutants: Directed by Brett Piper, Redneck Mutants had its world premiere at Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival and was the last part of the mega programming block that included Piper’s three Jules Verne/H.G. Wells shorts. Redneck Mutants isn’t a full on stop motion animated feature film, though. Instead, Redneck Mutants is a wild mix of live action and stop motion animation, with some truly great looking monsters spread throughout the movie’s 67 minute running time. And despite being the movie’s title and the fact that the Polonia Brothers are involved as, I guess, producers, Redneck Mutants is not a non-stop gorefest or even scary. Instead, Redneck Mutants is goofy as hell, with hilarious performances from just about everyone involved (the script is also chock full of great, weird as hell dialogue). It’s also family friendly as there’s nothing particularly “objectionable” in it. It’s fun from start to finish. I didn’t expect that (I mean, what do you think you’re going to see when the movie’s title is Redneck Mutants?). And the stop motion animation creatures created by Piper are nothing short of phenomenal. Redneck Mutants was the absolute best thing I saw on that first day. I want to see it again. Right now!
Rating: 10/10
Wintertide: And then there’s Wintertide, a morose Canadian horror flick that I didn’t quite understand. Me not getting what the movie is about doesn’t make Wintertidea bad movie; far from it. Wintertide is one of the best looking movies I’ve ever seen at Buffalo Dreams. The cinematography, the production value, the relentlessly grim winter setting of the story give Wintertide a true sense of dread because you’re not entirely sure what’s happening but you can see that whatever is happening is messing with people’s lives. Wintertide is an amazing looking movie. Should the movie have tried to explain itself, or had a character stop the plot for a minute or so to tell the audience what the hell is going on? I would have liked that, sure, but then doing that could have killed the movie’s mood. And that is what Wintertide has going for it more than anything else. Mood.
Wintertide, directed by John Barnard and produced for the Canadian cable channel Super Channel, takes place in a near future (maybe) where the world appears to be in a sort of permanent winter, as no one has seen the sun in months. What’s left of humanity patrols the streets in cars, looking for people who have been sort of transformed into zombies. These zombies, though, are not “traditional” zombies in that they’re dead and interested in eating people. Instead, these zombies are essentially emotionless machines that only get agitated and violent if they’re around certain people, like our protagonist Beth (Niamh Carolan), who is one of the people patrolling the streets. When Beth finds someone or comes in contact with someone she calls in a sort of police group that then rounds up the zombified people and takes them to a building where they just sort of exist in a kind of suspended animation. In the midst of her patrolling duties, Beth is also looking for her father, who disappeared at some point. Beth also has weird dreams that she can’t explain.
Now, as the movie progresses, we see Beth getting together with various people, men and women, having sex with them, and then those people are attacked by something that sure as hell looks like Beth in a dream that’s also reality (I think), and then those people turn into zombies and are picked up and sent to the warehouse. Why is this happening? And why does Beth keep engaging in this behavior, especially after she sees what happens when she gets intimate with people? That’s what you’re going to have to figure out because I have no idea.
Wintertide was apparently recently acquired by Gravitas Ventures for distribution in the United States, which I assume means that it will hit streaming and/or home video in the near future. I do think that once the movie gets out into the world that it will be a major conversation piece in the horror movie fandom. I’d love to know what other people think about Wintertide and what they think is happening with it. And if you’re reading this in Canada and you have access to Super Channel, be on the lookout for Wintertide and check it out. What do you think Wintertide is about?
Rating: 7/10
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Up Next: (Day 2) Part 2!
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