dir. Haley Z. Boston

“The Beach Logs Kill” is a dreamy horror short written and directed by Haley Z. Boston. Set in a world where sports are led by girls and cheered on by boys, the film follows the football team’s star player, referred to only as Number 36 (played by Ryan Simpkins from Fear Street Part Two: 1978). Everyone worships Number 36, from the people in the parking lot doing cheer routines before the big game to her fellow players, but nobody seems as enamored with her as The Bad Girl. Sentenced to a detention of scrubbing sharpie dicks off of the walls, The Bad Girl watches Number 36’s powerful speech to her teammates from the back of the room. Number 36 hypes the girls up for their game, reminding them that this is her last game as a senior, and that at the end of the game she will select someone to take over her number, and in doing so, they will claim her very essence. The girls look on hungrily, but they’re quickly interrupted by The Bad Girl, who has been drawn forward to Number 36 by her siren call of charisma. The Bad Girl is so inconsequential that Number 36 even wonders aloud if she has been in the room with them the whole time. Once The Bad Girl disappears back to her cleaning duties away from the group she is immediately forgotten about again.

Or so she thinks. As the other girls run out to their game, Number 36 confronts the girl. She tells the girl that she wouldn’t get detention, or have to wear the school’s detention shirt, if she was on varsity. The Bad Girl explains that she can’t be on varsity because she can’t catch anything. Number 36 tosses a tampon at her, which she doesn’t even attempt to catch. Flirtingly, Number 36 tells her that she can help her practice, but she really needs that tampon back. Before leaving, she marks the girl with her number, seemingly choosing her.

The viewer stays with The Bad Girl as the team plays. We hear the play by play as she sits alone in a bathroom stall, listening. She isn’t about to leave any room for error on whether or not she has been chosen to gain 36’s essence, as she pulls the other girl’s used tampon out of the disposal bin and inserts it in herself. As she inserts we hear that something tragic has happened to 36 on the field. She’s down, and she isn’t moving.

In a dreamy sequence akin to the end of Carrie (1976), The Bad Girl watches Number 36’s lifeless body on the field. People come to mourn, leaving flowers and balloons, and hovering over the girl’s fallen body. At first everyone seems respectful of 36’s body, but without warning a boy pees on her corpse, quickly followed by another boy leering over her with 36 carved into his face, culminating in one of her own teammates straddling her body and choking her lifeless corpse. The Bad Girl finally makes it to 36, dropping down beside her. She looks longingly at the #36 encased in a heart the girl left on her arm. Suddenly 36’s body jolts. The Bad Girl intertwines their fingers, happy to see that her idol has woken up just for her. The two share a kiss that seals the deal Number 36 set into place when she wrote her number on the other girl’s arm. The two are now swapped, but The Bad Girl isn’t gifted with 36’s charisma, athleticism, or high school fame; now it is her who lays dead on the field in an array as Number 36 struts off into the night.

“The Beach Logs Kill” is a great look at the obsession that can come with high school sports, and how so many of us would rather be anyone else. It creates a fun world by focusing on the girls as being rough and tough and the guys as their loyal supporters (who might resent their lot in life as mere accessories). The film, shot by Siobhan McCarthy, is reminiscent of De Palma, shot through a slow moving vaseline lens—everything feels like a dream. Clocking in at only nine minutes long, this short treat isn’t one to miss.