On the festival circuit beginning in late 2025, Vacio (Void), is a 14-minute deadly serious Spanish psychological horror directed by Javier Cano Larumbe. Along with fellow writer Blai Domenech, this story puts a young boy (Tomeu Artigas) in a dark and desolate place as his parents (María Valverde and Javier Beltrán) break up. It will be screening at the Cleveland International Film Festival on, April 10th and 11th. It has been programmed at Vudú Horror Fest, Fantasporto’s Director’s Week, and Alcalá de Henares International Film Festival.
Eschewing the usual one-good-scare-and-a-twist model for many shorts, the direction and cinematography go for tight framing of long dark hallways and dismal rooms. While his parents argue, the apartment becomes more and more broodingly sinister and ominous, with scant lighting to pierce the darkness. Sound and silence are also tightly controlled, with a loud noise waking Félix up as his old cathode ray tube television, left on, still plays a home video of happier times. He follows the sounds of his parents voices while other brief, discordant, sounds increase his fear. Long shots of him looking down those now scary hallways, and closeups of him peering through sliding doors keep his small body alone in the darkness. When the monster comes, it is a glimpse and then silence, except for the video still playing on his television. Festival blurbs peg it as an allegorical horror about social deterioration instead of a more directly menacing monster. Or you can also say it is a glimpse of how monsters take hold out of collateral damage. Given my own childhood experience, I’d go with the collateral damage. Like Félix, I kept my television on too. Vacio has received awards for Best Director, Best Cinematography, and Best Editing.
Playing up the colorful gore and body horror, A Hand to Hold, also screening at the Cleveland International Film Festival, is 15-minutes of absurd Irish Horror with humor. It starts with an unfriendly game of chess and ends where it started, but in-between it’s simply crazy. Where Vacio goes for the subtle art, this one goes for a Monty Pythonesque bloody good time. Moira (Francis Barber) has a troubled relationship with her husband. Notice how many horrors revolve around a toxic parental structure? He insists on winning at chess, and leaving an unfinished game? Definitely not. Philip Cylde-Smith goes for the visceral optics while Eliza Power brings the quirky humor to this tale of never letting go.
He dies as she holds his hand. And he still doesn’t let go. Rigor mortis problem? No. Maybe try an ointment to squeeze it off? No. He may be cold but his grip holds fast, with a power to start sucking the life out of her, even after the hasty and quite messy chainsaw surgery. Her daughter (Lisa O’Connor), her doctor (Frank Bourke), and the farmer with the chainsaw (Shane Casey), try their best but her husband (Murray McArthur) really wants to get back to that game. Things get so bad that a priest (Jimmy Tarbuck) provides useless prayers for Moira while a satanic priestess handles the invocations over her husband. Those flashy swirly sky dissolves, used to show the passage of time on a budget, keep popping up as Moira gets colder and her husband gets warmer. Nice to see practical prosthetics used as they work well with the tone and they keep the story light but bright red until the chess game is finished. A Hand to Hold premiered at Telluride Horror Show.
So there you have one seriously monstrous short and one monstrously delirious short you can sink your teeth into.