In David Holechek’s scifi short Cradle, a man haunted by the worst day of his life frantically tries to figure out a way to time-travel using precise calculations and, ultimately, his mind—think Somewhere in Time, but with a tragedy driving the narrative instead of a corny romance.
Winston is named for the narrator of Aram Sarkisian’s short, a desperate man dashing off a fevered letter that reads like a crazed diary entry. “I’m not losing my grasp again,” he insists, as he weaves an increasingly paranoid tale about his neighbor—a man he loathes and is obsessed with in equal measures.
With just under a month until the release of Blade Runner 2049, director Denis Villeneuve has asked three directors to make short prequel films to set up that story—and the second one is out now.
In Nick Everhart’s horror short Slash in the Box, a cheerfully naive man brings home a rusty old jack-in-the-box, which is his first mistake. It’s also his last mistake. This little creeper might not be as phobia-inducing as Pennywise, but it definitely has some serious nightmare potential.
In Cécile Carre’s short Burn Out, an intergalactic repairwoman makes an emergency landing on a planet that appears deserted—except for an oddly familiar little girl, who helps her remember why she wanted to blast into the stars in the first place. The meaning is obvious, but the execution is rather beautiful .
Usually, when a video game presents a seemingly impossible challenge, it’s the player who gets cranky. In Anthony Falleroni’s short Jumpy, it’s the hot-pink rabbit onscreen who becomes outraged—and more determined than ever to succeed.
The bearded man plunges his axe into a tree, and the tree turns into crystal. The camera pans out, and we see an entire forest like this, dozens of trees petrified in purple arrangements of gemstone.
In Tristram Geary’s Echo/Back, a strange virus strikes that enables the infected to time travel, but only in very short bursts—mere seconds into the past or future. The results are mostly chaotic, both for the world at large and the film’s protagonist, a thief who uses his strange ability to outmaneuver police in an…
Meet Baxter—a deadpan teenager who’s been accused of murdering his girlfriend, when really it seems she’s been spirited away into Cape Town’s supernatural underworld. Can the city’s drunkest mystical bounty hunter help him get her back? And where did that big-ass monster come from?
In the not-too-distant future, a tenuous peace between humans and remarkably humanlike “machines”—some don’t even know they’re not real—is tested when synthetics begin spontaneously exploding. A military-led search for these unwitting suicide bombers begins, sending a terrified machine woman and her human partner on…
Most people think of rainy days as gray, but in Nicolás P. Villarreal’s animated short Nieta, a little girl has exactly the opposite reaction. For her, gloomy weather brings delightful color—in splashes, sparkles, and fanciful shapes. Watch until the end of this brief, simple, but elegantly-made short to see why.
Make a list of the best science fiction films made this decade and World of Tomorrow is right near the top. If you haven’t seen or heard of it, that’s probably because it’s a short film, but it’s jaw-droppingly amazing and now it’s getting a sequel.
“Blissfull Melodies” is a very short—but still beautifully animated—film from four Gobelins students. The “twist” isn’t really one, but it still leaves you wanting more.
Lounging around at home, a bored teenage girl snaps a selfie and posts it to social media with the hashtag “#homealone.” When she checks to see the reaction a few minutes later, she realizes it suddenly reads “#notalone”—and a quick search reveals the hideously grisly fate she may soon face.
Even with the success of American Gods, we still may never get a Sandman movie, or even a TV series. But Neil Gaiman diehards need not despair completely, because there’s a new fan film that pays impressively exacting tribute to one of Sandman’s most brutal installments.
You might be more use to seeing him behind the controls of an X-Wing, dancing with robots, or fighting the X-Men, but this short film is quite unlike anything you’ve seen Oscar Isaac done before—and it’s very weird and wonderful.
In Ashley Anderson and Jacob Mann’s animated short, Extinguished, love is represented literally—as a flame right where a person’s heart beats in his or her chest. A dejected young man’s fire goes out, until a pretty new neighbor moves in. Can he play it cool or will his, ah, burning attraction get the better of him?
You already hate going down into your dark, damp, spidery, probably ghost-infested basement—and creepy short film Two Birds, about a woman who discovers something deeply horrible when she ventures to her home’s subterranean level—won’t help that phobia one bit.
Aspiring rock stars The Privates have a problem, and it ain’t the usual band drama. It ain’t even Spinal Tap-style, exploding-drummer drama. It’s the fact that the band’s music hits a strange frequency in the precise right way to generate radioactive energy. So, uh, should they still play that house party or what?
A chipper hero named Ed bleeps and blorps through his city—which looks and sounds suspiciously like a retro video game—in Rodrigo Díaz’s short animation Gummy Gas Crisis. Ed’s mission: to chase down a baddie named Lord Gadiseous, who’s spreading gas (the stinky kind) all over town.
