dir. Robyn Adams

The Estrogen Gospel is an allegorical short film exploring the experience of women. It builds a narrative of religious undertones and allusions while maintaining an air of transcendence. We are taken by the hand into a pilgrimage, where the character meets a group of people who warn not only the pilgrim but also the audience about the journey. What appears as a helping hand, as groups and communities are wont, is her first obstacle. If she must embark on the journey, she must make the decision and do it alone. On the journey toward acceptance, the pilgrim must confront not only herself but also the “Dead:” disembodied voices and the evil she will face on her way. The “Dead” appears to be more than what was, as in Genesis, but an obstacle—a symbol of the self and the voice of dissent. She must choose to succumb to the past or continue toward the Cross (that which is promised). 

As with all struggles with the self, this is the defining journey. The namelessness of this character appears intentional; what namelessness hides is uncovered in generality. This is the Gospel for everyone, like the pilgrim.

Robyn Adams in The Estrogen Gospel subverts traditional religious pilgrimage. Instead, reinterpreting pilgrimage as inward and personal. But what is more religious than what goes on in our bodies, within us? To answer this, the pilgrim, despite the warnings, goes to the Hill. It is on this hill that one gets the clearest view of the town. The Hill serves as both the site of epiphany and the location of the Old Cross. The “Dead” that the character confronts confirms the group’s concern. The Hill is not a safe place, and to defeat the “Dead,” the pilgrim must resolve to live. To “become a living woman.” In this, there is an implied message: what defines the extent to which one lives or appears to live is disavowal or refusal of death. To live, the pilgrim must affirm that she is alive. It is in this affirmation that she defeats the “Dead.” The Hill is, after all, the place one goes to see the town clearly. The symbol of clarity. 

In this journey, we are entrusted with the responsibility of onlookers, as the group was in the beginning. We are entrusted with the responsibility of asking whether or not the danger is worth it, if staying back is not the safer option. But our responsibility stops at the foot of the hill, even before the ascent. This subversion begins and ends with self-discovery. As the pilgrim discovers people like her in the bar, she, after the journey, discovers herself. One question hangs in the air: what happens after the Old Cross? To what end is the pilgrimage? As if in response to this, the pilgrim is welcomed back into town by one of the group members. The Estrogen Gospel leaves us with more questions than answers, inviting reflection on death, transformation, and life: are the bodies on the Hill bodies of successful pilgrims, or is death essential to the transformation?

dir. Iris Dukatt

After scanning its title, I suspected that queer independent theatre and filmmaker Iris Dukatt’s latest offering, Long Pork, would be an entry into the ever-growing and wildly popular contemporary cannibal horror genre—films that often serve as meditations on the consuming force of feminine desire and the dire consequences that arise from attempting to suppress it, as patriarchal socialization demands, as seen in Yellowjackets (2021-present), Raw (2016), and Bones and All (2022).

The people-eaters in this bold and brutal 13-minute short, however, summon another cinematic canon that foregrounds the loss of autonomy as a stage for horror—the rape-revenge narrative. A far cry from the genre’s 1970s beginnings—often criticized for using titillating violence against women as an inciting incident rather than as an empathetic indictment of its perpetrators—Long Pork follows in the footsteps of fourth-wave feminist filmmakers who keep the atrocities off-screen, like Emerald Fennell’s Promising Young Woman (2020). If Fennell’s film responded to the insidious persistence of revenge porn and college rape culture in the 2020s, then Long Pork is a visceral answer to the overturning of Roe v. Wade—an abortion-rights revenge. Explicitly set in a “post-Roe America” where “theocracy reigns,” the film follows a renowned butcher who confronts the political predator responsible for her daughter’s death and exacts bloody revenge. Here, the horror of lost autonomy is no longer metaphorical, but literal—flesh and blood, for which our heroine demands retribution, pound for pound.

It’s hard to discuss body horror without invoking David Cronenberg, whose influence looms large over Long Pork with its grimy, jaundiced coloring and dilapidated clinical settings that drip with decay. The dialogue, too, delightfully unvarnished and unnervingly straightforward, heightens the film’s unsettling atmosphere. Lenda Hadley, of Game of Thrones fame, delivers a performance that is both sardonic and fiercely compelling, infusing her character with a complexity that lingers. The strobing edits featuring the spectral presence of the protagonist’s daughter are hauntingly effective, intertwining with the narrative in a way that feels both visceral and ethereal, allowing the audience to grasp the terror and grief underpinning the film without having physically witnessed the tragedy on screen.

The film’s true strength lies in its elegant simplicity. While many dystopian shorts fall into the trap of convoluted narratives that struggle to find their footing within a limited timeframe, Long Pork excels with a story that is as clean and precise as a carefully butchered cut of meat. The sets and performances are impeccably curated, with lighting and cinematography that create a polished, editorial aesthetic that belies a modest budget. Overall, Dukatt has established themself as an exciting new voice in queer horror, and their future works will undoubtedly be highly anticipated by audiences of this film. A refreshing challenge to a genre that can often rely on bloody spectacle to disguise an undercooked plot, Long Pork is (pardon the pun) truly well done.

dir. Aliyah Knight

Consume from director Aliyah Knight is a queer coming of age tale full of sex, blood, and religious guilt. Her story focuses on Esther (Sara Camara), who is from a religious household yet gives into her growing attraction to her friend Alana (Jess Spies). What is so interesting about Knight’s use of cannibalism is that it is not framed as the actual horror of the film. The real moments of horror are the ones that many of those questioning their identities face when they feel their identity misaligns with their upbringing. Esther is judged by her sister and feels she is letting her family down, becoming untethered from her religious background, and that those around her know something is “wrong” with her. 

While Esther may feel that giving into her desire transformed her into a monster, the sex/cannibalism scene is itself framed as being very sexy and intimate. Cannibalism as a metaphor for love and desire is something much more often discussed in horror spheres than seen in horror films and television. Bones and All from filmmaker Luca Guadagnino is perhaps the best example of this. It aligns with the romantic notion of becoming one with the person you love, fusing the two humans together forever. 

Consume and Bones and All also blend this with their queer themes. When we live in societies that look down upon those who are queer and queer relations as taboo, then it aligns this simple act of loving someone of the same gender as being as horrific. In these societies, queerness is as taboo as things like necrophilia, incest, and of course, cannibalism. In this way, Knight’s short shows the ridiculous means used by organized religion to make someone questioning their identity, as Esther does, feel as though they have “sinned” in one of the worst possible ways. And the more we repress, the more this desire and hunger come out in other ways. 

Within its short 12-minute runtime, Aliyah Knight’s Consume is able to show and explore a type of self-hatred that many of us who have questioned our identities have felt, and the harm that putting this kind of pressure on a young person can do. It is no surprise that queer folks have aligned themselves and identified with monstrous characters throughout horror history. Marginalized communities have frequently been made to feel like there is something intrinsically wrong with their being, and that if people discover what is hidden inside them, they’ll be run off with pitchforks by the town mob. 

While there is much sadness in seeing the struggle Esther goes through, one that sours a beautiful blossoming romance, the intimate moments between Esther and Alana are beautiful. The flirtation, glances, and innocent spark of love are reminders of how beautiful queer love is, even if others try to taint it with hateful rhetoric. Consume balances beauty and horror with expert filmmaking, beautiful writing, and two actors whose performances give us all the lovey dovey feels. Knight is a talent and I hope to see more from her, and more cannibal love stories. 

If you like Consume, you may also like:

• My Animal (dir. Jacqueline Castel, 2023)
• Perpetrator (dir. Jennifer Reeder, 2023)
• Bones and All (dir. Luca Guadagnino, 2022)
• May (dir. Lucky McKee, 2002) 

dir. Zach Green

Two young women in summer dresses dance together in a garden. It is such a familiar image of carefree joy that it almost reads as cliché—except that here the scene is painted in a gory palette of pinks and reds, evoking the interior chambers of a human heart. The dancers are photographic negatives of their real selves. So, too, are the emotions inverted in this short film about thwarted desire. Love transforms into a twisted and singular obsession. An idyllic birthday outing turns into a nightmare.

Patty (Rosalind Jackson Roe) is a woman suffocated by her own want. Still infatuated with her ex-girlfriend Elaine (Shayla Fiveland), she spends most of her time looking up her former lover on social media, tracking her every move. Her fingers trail along the static outline of Elaine’s photo on her computer. She brings her lips to the screen and inhales, as though she can breathe the other woman in through the static. She chews anxiously at her hair and seethes as she discovers that Elaine has a new girlfriend, Lauren (Laila Blue), and that it is Lauren’s birthday tomorrow. Click, click, click: a series of photographs and memories rendered in violent red.

What’s a girl to do who’s in love with her ex? The boring answer is “go to therapy and get back on the apps.” Patty chooses a more unusual course of action: she casts a spell, ties herself to her bed, and wakes up not just in another room, but in another person. Patty’s consciousness now inhabits Lauren’s body, sprawled out in Elaine’s sun-drenched bed. Lauren, somewhere across town, wakes up in Patty’s body, bound and unable to leave her grim little apartment. Director Zach Green knowingly juxtaposes Patty-as-Lauren writhing in pleasure as she and Elaine make love with Lauren-as-Patty straining against her bonds, weeping as ropes cut into her wrists.

“My hair was soft. My skin was glowing.  I was who I always wanted to be,” Patty says. The camera glides along her hands entwined with Elaine’s, their bodies fit snugly into one another. This, then, is who Patty has always wanted to be: the person who is with Elaine. There is no room in her for any other kind of desire.

The resulting montage is what sapphic daydreams are made of—a breakfast carefully prepared by a lover, a sunlit walk along a riverbank, a perfect, thoughtful gift. But Elaine’s face becomes increasingly troubled as the day goes on. She notices the sudden change in her girlfriend, the intensity of her gaze, her new habit of chewing on her hair. She knows that something is wrong. And, in a small apartment not so very far away, Lauren has pulled herself free…

dir. Jack Warren

I have been thinking a lot about transformation. Partly because my home town was ravaged by flooding a few months ago, and our area has become something alien and new. Buildings are empty hulls, a riverbank has become gorge-like, a neighborhood park is now a field of silt and debris. And on walks in my neighborhood, I’ll find myself being drawn to this destruction, over and over, trying to find anything resembling the landscape that was there before. 

And I imagine this is what gender dysphoria must feel like. To look in a mirror and see a body landscape that is foreign to you. Or, as a trans friend described to me before their gender affirming surgery, it was like looking in a mirror and never really processing your physical image. Imagine having that utter disconnection with your outward appearance and to know deep down, what the world sees, is not who you truly are. 

In that case, a metamorphosis would be welcome. To experience a destruction of the layers that you are hidden under, peeled away and removed, how freeing and glorious that would be. 

This transformative journey is the beauty within Papergirl, a short film written, directed, and edited by Jack Warren and starring Willis Weinstein. We linger in tight shots on Willis as he seems invisible to those around him, being bumped into or ignored by strangers, like he lives on another level of existence. On a crowded train, he pulls on his headphones and avoids eye contact, almost fearfully willing himself to completely disappear from others’ notice. 

Willis brings raw vulnerability to his performance as we watch him navigate a world he is apparently extremely uncomfortable in. With little dialogue and shot in an almost clinical black and white finish, we rely on Willis’s innate yet subtle ability to show timidness and discomfort in his face and body. And as his journey continues we realize it’s not the world he is uncomfortable in, it’s his skin…his body. Eventually, Willis discovers this external self is just an obtrusive and minuscule layer, and after a gooey and sticky removal process, their true self is finally revealed. Monstrously beautiful. Finally, at peace and comfort within themself, they break into a spontaneous dance. Their body, finally, no longer tightly wound and restrictive. 

This process of transformation in Papergirl isn’t gentle, it isn’t pretty, but it also isn’t destructive like my area’s recent storm; instead, it’s a magnificent liberation of self. It’s something to celebrate, not mourn. Transformation, sometimes, is taking away the burden of otherness and letting someone exist in their body, finally whole and finally seen. My trans friend describes the feeling perfectly: “It’s hard to try and put into words the feeling of looking at yourself as an adult…and actually seeing yourself for the first time ever.” With Jack Warren’s short film Papergirl, we get to witness this euphoric journey of finding one’s self, and by the end, we dance alongside our glorious lead character. 

dirs. Aura Martinez Sandoval & Jackson Rees

It Came From Inside! by Aura Martinez Sandoval and Jackson Rees is a perplexingly familiar yet unfamiliar film. In some ways it feels recognizable with its “evil child” trope and plotlines about stopping the end of the world. In other ways, it is refreshing in its subversion of expectations for gender and sexuality.  

The short film takes place on a fall evening near Halloween. It opens with a secret agent leaving a message on his audiotape for future listeners explaining that the creature he has escaped from “wants our meat.” To prevent this from happening, the device he has stolen from the creature must be destroyed. 

Nearby, after a Halloween party, a couple—Oliver (Luke Harger) and Vicky (Gentry Loghry)—discuss having children. Oliver, who wants to have a child (and comes prepared with a presentation to prove it), is dressed as a nun; Vicky, who disagrees, is dressed as the devil. Oliver shows Vicky a scrapbook of their future life with a baby but is interrupted by the sound of an explosion. They go outside and find the audiotape (which has survived the explosion) in their trash can with the mysterious message from the secret agent. Later, the creature appears, and a baby is born. 

Like Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby, this film is concerned with the connection between the horrors of childbirth, interpersonal relationships, and uncertainties about the future. In both films, the man is convinced it is time to have a child, as if this is an event fated and necessary to happen in the trajectory of everyone’s life. In Polanski’s film, it is Rosemary who gives birth, but in Sandoval and Rees’ film, it is the man who is forced to have a child with a demonic destiny.

Both films embody American scholar Lauren Berlant’s idea of cruel optimism, which she posits as desirable “objects” posing problems rather than delivering the promise of happiness they are expected to fulfill. Having a child is often seen as investing in the future (of not only the relationship but also society at large). Yet, in both Rosemary’s Baby and It Came From Inside! the child is declared to be evil and only promises a future of devastation.

Even though it is explicitly revealed that Rosemary’s baby is the spawn of Satan, the baby is famously never shown on screen. Many people lauded the film for doing this as the horror is implied to be so terrifying we can only imagine it. Though we do not see the baby, Rosemary does, and her change in disposition, her look of tenderness as the lullaby sings in the background, haunts us. It is an immaterial cruel optimism, a promise of something supposedly desirable and good that will cause harm.

Similarly, the baby in It Came From Inside! is unquestionably destructive; at the very end of the movie, the alien says that the newborn child will one day “grow to devour worlds.” It was interesting then, that the directors chose to show the baby, a bloody figure with six legs and a tail. To give the being a body, to make it corporeal, is to concretize this idea of cruel optimism. However, like Rosemary’s Baby, this short film ends with the idea that the future is, in fact, uncertain and cannot be guaranteed to us by certain “objects.”

dir. Jordan Pfeifer

Ingestion, directed by Jordan Pfeifer, is a slow-burn, body horror-laden meditation on heartbreak, addiction, and toxic relationships. Isa (Selin Genç), a painter, tries to erase her ex-girlfriend Kiera (Michelle Askew) from her art as well as her life, and finds unexpected, painful comfort in consuming her materials. Paint seeps through cuts, is squeezed from tubes into mouths and (implied to be) ingested during oral sex. The film even manages to make paint seem delicious when sucked off a fingertip or drunk deeply from paint water glasses. The colour pink seems to haunt the artist throughout the film; in Keira’s hair, her platform heels and sparkly eyeshadow left behind in Isa’s flat. There is a sense of lonely sensuality in the room when Isa lays all of Kiera’s pink items on the bed, and ravenously consumes pink-toned paint with her hands. 

Isa’s descent into madness finally reaches its climax in the most visceral scene of the film, which takes place in a bathtub because where else do you hit rock bottom? When Isa returns to us she seems brighter, tearing an orange to pieces in the bath with a soft smile. Much better than what she was doing before. We get a sense that she might actually be okay; except this is a horror film, where there aren’t many happy endings. Kiera is outside Isa’s flat, threatening suicide and crying in oversized, melodramatic sobs that dry up as soon as Isa opens the door. 

Who among us hasn’t let a gorgeous redhead ruin our lives? When Isa falls back into bed with Kiera, after her heartfelt, welcoming offer of care and love, it is a moment of horror, not a joyful reunion. How much harder it is to face the difficult and thankless journey toward independence and freedom from toxic cycles, especially when it looks like an empty, darkened flat and only a nurse to care for you when you inevitably crash and burn. How much warmer, more comforting to turn inwards, toward the source of your pain. Especially when she’s dying to comfort you, dying to feed you, to fill you up with colour, even if it’s toxic. Even if it’s bad for you. It fills the void in a familiar, hot pink hue. And it feels good. 

Ingestion is romantic horror. Like Dracula and Twilight before it, the film’s horror lies in our inherent connection and reliance on others, on how our overpowering desire for love and sex will inevitably drive us to ruin. Like vampires and thrall, Isa and Kiera’s relationship is defined by power; they each hold something over the other. Isa seems to be the only one who yearns, who has needs, and whose needs are not met. But the same could be said of Kiera. A symbiotic relationship, of feeding and being fed. Ingestion is a thoughtful, artistic film that grapples with imperfect characters and the toxicity that can come from love. It’s My Strange Addiction meets The L Word meets Black Swan. Watch it.  

dir. Dante Dammit

Dante Dammit’s Tastes Like Pork begins with a friendly warning—if we are squeamish, or easily offended, we should avert our eyes now and select a different picture to peruse. The brave few who decide to continue will be greeted with a fuzzy, dream-pink montage of candles and flowers, and a love song that wouldn’t sound out of place in the 50s. We are then presented with the stars of the film; an unnamed cisgender woman (Grace Volpe), and an unnamed transgender woman (Aurora Lowther). They dine together with the characteristic awkwardness of two women on a first date. Conversation fizzles and dies. Eventually, they decide to get to the meat of the issue, as it were, and retreat to a more intimate setting—not a bedroom or a boudoir, but rather what closely resembles a serial killer’s basement. 

At first glance, these women have no real chemistry together. There is nothing that the viewers might immediately identify as a spark between them, nothing that denotes them as a compatible couple. 

And yet, they do have one—rather eccentric—desire that binds them together. 

 The cisgender woman wants to eat a penis. The transgender woman wants to have her penis eaten. I dread to imagine the catering at the wedding. 

As grotesque as the premise is, this is a film with an odd amount of tenderness. Both characters are uncertain of themselves, virginal and tentative in a way that seems incongruous with the violence of the acts portrayed. The cannibalistic cisgender lead is no Hannibal Lecter, smooth and sophisticated—one of the funniest moments of the film is when she attempts to encourage her partner to arousal, with some truly terrible dirty talk that made me wince more than the actual cannibalism. And the transgender heroine is quick-witted and sarcastic and visibly anxious about the proceedings. This evident humanity displayed by both women makes the subsequent violent removal of the latter’s penis all the more startling. As a simulacrum of sex, it is suitably prolonged, graphic, and about as inappropriate to watch with your parents in the room. When teeth do not suffice, a saw is used. 

(For the viewers who are preoccupied with health and safety, not to worry—the severed appendage is cooked before it is consumed.)

After the act is done, the two women seem to have diametrically opposing reactions. The transwoman lead is relieved, both literally and figuratively lighter—although she spends the rest of the film in an ice bucket, clearly in some degree of pain. The ciswoman is remorseful, assailed by memories of the incident as she cooks. Her monologue on her guilt is both poignant and entertaining—”I think there might actually be something truly and deeply fucked up with me…I did watch like Silence of the Lambs very young.” Anyone who has ever felt ashamed of their desires can certainly relate to the earnestness of her confession. Unfortunately, it falls on deaf ears. The transwoman is asleep—at least, we hope she’s merely unconscious, and not in a more sinister state from some truly DIY gender-affirming surgery. 

Tastes Like Pork is a delightful dish of a movie, a light and refreshing change from what we might typically expect from cannibalistic horror tropes. Dante Dammit marries humour and horror, a couple as unlikely as the film’s stars. To all you horror gourmets out there, I hope you’re hungry for a real treat of a film.