Playful + Profound: Highlights from Grave Plot Film Fest

CW: Mention of sexual assault as part of reviewed media

When I arrived at Central Cinema on Feb. 1 for the Grave Plot Film Festival, it had been snowing all morning. But the snow did not deter the spooky people of Seattle from crawling out of their hiding places and donning their most goth attire for a celebration of all things macabre. 

There are those of us (author included) for whom Halloween is not enough—we like to be scared year-round. Two such individuals are Taylor Bartle and Tony Gee, aka Taylor of Terror and SkeleTony, co-hosts of the Grave Plot Podcast and Grave Plot Film Festival. “Thank you guys for traversing the arctic tundra,” Bartle said in his introduction, adding that when they first began the festival in 2019, the duo didn’t expect it would last more than a year. This was the 7th annual iteration of the festival, and its first at Central Cinema, the delightful 123-seat dine-in theater in Seattle’s Central District. 

Theater seating inside Central Cinema

The Evergreen Echo

Over the course of the next four hours, the packed audience viewed 19 short films selected through a narrowing process that took quite some time, according to the hosts. These short films were a sampling of the innovation and immense talent that the horror genre has to offer in 2025. There was a lot of international representation, with selections from France, Spain, Canada, and Ireland. There was also some local talent highlighted; Seattle filmmaker Galen Andrus’ Come In, Stranger was shot in Carnation, WA, while Eric Morgret’s The Connoisseur was shot in Renton. 

The audience favorite of the afternoon, as selected by popular vote, was Don’t Tell Your Mom, a Canadian film by Christopher Andrew Graham about a teenager who starts working for his cousin’s business dealing blood to vampires. Witty and original, this short captured the spirit of much of the festival— sometimes, actually, horror can be very silly. Only a few films took themselves completely seriously, and humor reigned supreme, from a camping couple’s decapitated heads singing “Oh My Darling Clementine”  inside their tent in Colin Stryker’s Lumberjack to the frenzied loud music and unhinged fight sequences in Juanjo Avi’s Turno de Noche: The Wrong Place.

Two films stood out as the scariest. Andrew Blazensky and Neil Chestnutt’s Agnes Wakes Up was a marvel of intricate set design, and the demon in this film moved in a genuinely unnerving way, including some excellent jump scares. Then there was Luke De Brún’s My Brother Jeremy, a suspense-filled static-y nightmare in the vein of Skinamarink and other analog horror. 

Finally, the two shorts that stole the show in my opinion were both French language films: Simon Plante’s La Console, and Mattéo La Capria’s Another Alice. Both films use surreal imagery to bring the reader to a nightmarish state. La Console follows a man hoping to get ahead at work. He finds a mysterious video game console that allows him to practice beating up one of his coworkers, interspersed with commentary from a man who won’t stop smiling and whose voiceover is unsynced. This was a really effective example of world-building in just 13 minutes.

In Another Alice, Alice dissociates in the midst of being sexually assaulted, imagining herself in Wonderland. She turns her attacker into the White Rabbit and the bystanders who are doing nothing to help her into the Caterpillar, the Mad Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts, attempting to construct a more playful narrative out of what’s going on. But eventually, all of her surreal visions turn rotten, and what is really happening creeps in. The film uses bright colors, surreal makeup, and stunning lighting to bring us into this terrifying dream world. There is an extended shot that lingers on Alice’s blank face afterwards that made me feel physically ill, followed by the image of a burning piano on frosted grass. 

The feeling underlying the Grave Plot Film Festival was the way in which the horror community looks out for each other. The filmmakers highlighted in the festival are unafraid to point the camera at terrifying real-life topics such as grief, abusive relationships, and sexual assault, but also to offer moments of levity and warmth so that we might feel less alone.