NOV 21, 2024 | ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT| By Anya Potsiadlo
On Nov. 12, the Cornerstone Screening Room was filled to the brim with students — so much so that after all the seats were filled, people started populating the aisles. My appetite for student films was still strong after watching the Intro to Filmmaking movies that directly preceded the Horror films, but before the lights went dim, the professors came to say a few words about their vision for the class, FM301: Advanced Topics in Filmmaking.
Focusing on the horror genre, in their eyes, was about more than just examining and employing the techniques that give horror movies their due creepiness. Instead, a particular focus was put on the recent surge of popular horror movies that draw attention to more profound topics such as gender, sexuality, race and the biases that surround them. The two professors, Arom Choi and Baran Germen put forth the argument that horror films are inherently inseparable from the social contexts and commentaries from which they emerge. The student films all included these elements within their stories.
Unfortunately, Cornerstone Screening Room does not allow popcorn, but consider me at the moment the lights finally dimmed, metaphorically getting out my popcorn in eagerness of the shows to commence. If you weren’t able to make it, here’s a synopsis of some of the student groups’ final short films.
We were introduced to the main character of the first film through the lens of a YouTube screen, which played a vlog-style video that traced her increasingly serious transformation from a YouTube influencer to a werewolf. The first signs of her metamorphosis were explained passively in light-hearted videos that became increasingly jarring as the film continued: At one point, she took a large bite of raw meat on camera and started a viral internet challenge. In the final scene, the YouTuber is live streaming on the night of the full moon as she goes through her most drastic change, now a full werewolf. The werewolf attacks the person behind the camera, leaving the live stream running while looking at a still image of the ground as comments roll through on the side. A truly tasteful and modern take on the classic teenage werewolf.
The second film begins with a well-framed shot of a girl standing at her bathroom counter looking at the results of a pregnancy test. The character then makes a phone call to the “women’s auto repair shop,” using cryptic language about cars to make an appointment to get an abortion. The film follows the character in the week leading up to her appointment as she frequently notices still, creepy, human figures staring at her, breeding a growing paranoia. They begin to follow her near constantly until she is eventually compelled to run through the dark snowy night to the clinic itself. The plot was riveting, and the already beautifully shot film was perfectly complemented by the stroke of luck that a snowstorm occurred during filming, making for a spectacular penultimate scene. Once she arrived, the screen went dark and we were left with just the dialogue of a conversation where a woman in the clinic ensured the patient was safe to wait there until her appointment. The video resumes in the morning, when the character leaves the clinic on a blue sunny day and the film ends.
The third film gave a horror-like portrayal of an immigrant student’s experience in a class where she experiences a multitude of microaggressions. She speaks emphatically on the phone with someone about how she can’t bear to be in the class any longer, then hangs up to hear the class spark a conversation about immigration policy in which other students make casually harmful comments about the topic seemingly without any thought. The bro-culture of the predominantly white male class only exacerbates the alienating nature of their comments. As the student struggles through this emotionally exhausting class, meets with an advisor to try and take a new class and talks with a friend about her struggles, the framing of the shots becomes more agitated and abrasive. Close-up shots draw attention to the unsettling scratching noise as the teacher takes notes on the board, mirrored by the student’s anxious scratching of her skin. The final scene leans fully into the horror that had been building up, as the character finds herself trapped in the classroom alone with a clone of herself. The film ends leaving her desperately trying to escape.
It was fun to see familiar campus locations converted into horror settings in the first three films. There was nothing familiar, though, about the place where most of the fourth film took place, which was an abandoned missile silo. The filming style of the scenes in this movie was reminiscent of high-adrenaline adventure vlogs recorded on an old camcorder. The story starts in a Home Depot where employees help them buy equipment to rappel into the depths of abandoned tunnels. After successfully obtaining the necessary goods, they drive to the site and start their expedition. What do you think? Will they make it out alive? The commitment to the film was clear in the fact that they actually did enter this abandoned missile site, so making every shot creepy was a done deal. The bantery dialogue between the three characters elicited laughs from the crowd even as they seemed increasingly destined for failure. Eventually, the characters get lost in the tunnels, with no clue about where they started. After this, things start taking a turn for the worse as loud mysterious noises from the tunnels become more frequent. The three characters are eventually split up, and you wouldn’t have had to take a horror movie class to know that chances of survival at this point are slim if not zero. Two of the characters are killed by gangly creatures living in the tunnels, and the third nearly escapes after rappelling back up. When he reaches the top, however, he is met with an unfriendly group in hazmat suits who take the camera and close the lid to the tunnels back over him.
The experience of sitting to watch a movie in the theater is always met with the pleasurable and distinct experience of leaving the theater to a much darker night colored by thoughts of the scenes that just filled your last hours. Leaving Cornerstone, I was glad to be joined in this by the company of my friends as we discussed the films that reinspired, as movies tend to do, our admiration for the world of film that is now populated by four more incredible student films.