SQFF’s Fright Night Ushers in Spooky Season with Queer Shorts

Taking place in October, it’s no wonder that the aptly-themed Q-Thartic Seattle’s Queer Film Festival featured so many stunning horror entries. And near midnight on Friday the 10th, on the top floor of Pacific Place on a chilly night, the dreadful darlings were released to a crowd of horror-hungry gays!

Fright Night!, a block of shorts in SQFF’s lineup, delivered five stories of queer horror ranging from tragic thrillers to cosmic comedies. And like all good horror anthologies, the films made your heart race, your hairs rise, and—eventually—rewarded you with the satisfaction of release, but always leaving you hungry for a bit more. 

The set opened strong with Cold Feet, from director Anna Vecellio, a classic horror story of the sleepover-gone-wrong. A woman invites her girlfriend over to help her escape the heat in her air-conditioned bedroom. As the girlfriend settles, their conversation quickly reveals that the host struggles with intimacy. But how can she focus on that when the covers keep moving on their own and she finds unfamiliar strands of hair leading under her bed? It quickly becomes clear that the couple has much bigger things to worry about than intimacy counseling as the thing under the bed grows tired of hiding. 

We were lucky enough to have the opportunity to speak with writer/director Anna Vecellio after the screening for a brief Q&A. When asked if she had her own monster under her bed when she was young, Vecellio had this to say: 

“In real life, I made my sister let me sleep in her room for many years because I was so terrified of there being anything under my bed. Now, I just have a bed with drawers underneath it so it’s physically impossible for there to be anything under there. But when I was conceptualizing the film, I really wanted to explore my own discomfort with emotions and relationships, and so I used that childhood fear as a touchstone for that.”

Next was House Hunters, directed by Joe Warner.

In a familiar but not-quite-as-satirical-as-I-would-like reality, partners Apple and Pear tour a house that is as rotten as the cold-blooded real estate agent giving them their tour. Apple glosses over every red flag, determined to make this cesspit into a home for her and Pear. But it’s no longer as simple as paying a hefty security deposit and signing a lease. If the young couple wants the house, they’ll have to be willing to fight for it. Unfortunately for them, the current tenant is just as willing. 

House Hunters is a brief but incredibly satisfying introspection into the state of the housing market, managing to be both horrific and hilarious. But watch out: the sweetness of the narrative may leave you with a bit of a headache (IYKYK).

Beach Logs Kill / SQFF

In Beach Logs Kill, directed by Haley Z. Boston, it’s the star quarterback’s last game of her high school career. She promises her lucky jersey to one of the other girls, claiming that a piece of her will become a part of the recipient. It’s not her teammates who get Number 36’s attention, however, but rather the girl sentenced to clean up penis graffiti in the locker room. The bad girl and the smalltown hero? It’s a tale as old as time. But something happens to Number 36 during the game: Her body is left on the field as a procession of strange mourners honor (or sully) her memory. 

Beach Logs Kill paints an absurdist caricature of high school sports culture that is reminiscent of Emma Seligman’s Bottoms but with a horror twist. It’s the kind of short film you’ll want to rewatch because you’ll be left with a sense that you didn’t catch everything, and you probably didn’t! Every frame has a visual treat or tongue-in-cheek gag; even the name of the film is a joke about the out-of-context absurdity of state park warning signs. Even the jersey number feels like a mystery to be solved. Thirty-six is, after all, a mathematically, philosophically, and religiously significant number. 

The penultimate film in the set, Jackrabbit Homestead, directed by Kimberlea Kressal, features a widow attempting to escape her grief in a remote home she inherited from her deceased wife. But Daya can’t escape her memories; she keeps unearthing reminders in her yard.

One day, she finds a piece of her wife’s mug. The next, the ribbon that tied their hands together on their wedding day. Like many people desperately processing their grief, she’d rather bury the reminders away than deal with (or even acknowledge) them. But purposeful ignorance can only protect you for so long. After all, things buried longed to be unearthed. And eventually, Daya has to mentally confront what at least a part of her already knows: she’s not alone in the desert. She’ll have to deal with “the things that live in emptiness.” 

Sapphic narratives have truly conquered the idea of “beauty in longing.” There is a delicious bittersweetness to Jackrabbit Homestead. Although it was thrilling and even terrifying, it was uplifting as well. Even hopeful.

Moisés Richart as Mamántula / SQFF

Finally, Mamántula, directed by Ion De Sosa: Who is Mamántula? Is he the man of your dreams or nightmares, a lover or a killer? Will he take you to the brink of ecstasy or push you over the edge to your doom? 

The film takes place in an alternative present, a world that is familiar in the same way surrealism resembles reality. Mamántula is a human-spider hybrid hailing from a distant world. He lures his victims in with sex and desire, then sucks the life—among other things—out of them for his own alien purposes. As he terrorizes the local queer cruising scene, detectives Marta and Lorena follow in the wake of his destruction, although with little success. In the end, the police can only take credit for Mamántula’s demise, who was brought down by one of his many lovers after he discovered Mamántula’s true identity. Yet even with his death, his “project” still waits in the dark metro tunnels below…

Mamántula is a beautiful balancing act between satirical horror and cutting cultural critique. The cops, often viewed from a high-corner shot (perhaps a spider’s-eye view?), don’t seem overly concerned with stopping the killings. Instead, they busy themselves with hobby photography, making out, and raiding the clubs being terrorized, further traumatizing the affected community. One bystander goes so far as to call the police Mamántula’s “agents.” Truly, this short film leaves you wondering who the villains were, and if there were any heroes at all. 

SQFF’s Fright Night! was a great reminder that queer horror is an incredibly varied genre. Each short stood out not only as a horror piece, but also as queer art. Sapphic stories stood hand-in-hand with narratives about gay men; there were queers who cruised and queers who wanted a homestead. 

Dir. Anna Vecellio herself summed it up well: “I think horror works at its best when we’re exploring things that would otherwise be too uncomfortable or too emotionally painful…historically, the horror genre was one of the first places where queer people could get their stories told, even in just a subtextual sense. I think in the history of horror filmmaking, there’s a lot of queer characters, even ones that go unnamed. So, I think in that sense, horror is a genre that’s much more open to all sorts of diversity.”