Meet the next gen­er­a­tion of genre filmmakers

Short film is and always will be its own thing. With its own ded­i­cat­ed fes­ti­vals, awards, mas­ters and move­ments, it’s a whole lot more than just some dilut­ed foot­note to the fea­ture-length scene. But there’s no deny­ing that short form con­tent can be a vital train­ing ground for fea­ture film­mak­ers – every­one from Andrea Arnold to Mar­tin McDon­agh, to block­buster direc­tors like Pat­ty Jenk­ins and Rian John­son, cut their teeth on tiny bud­gets and snipped-back run­times, allow­ing them to hone their craft, find their voice, and prove to the film world that they haven’t just wan­dered in off the street.

Even before it shot its way over to Sun­dance last year, Rob Savage’s new-wave zom­bie film Dawn of the Deaf was the stuff of leg­end – the open­ing set-up to a very 21^st-cen­tu­ry hor­ror. Both a 25-minute ode to George A Romero and a mod­ern British char­ac­ter dra­ma, the film crams every­thing from the pol­i­tics of dis­abil­i­ty to sex­u­al­i­ty and sex­u­al abuse into a famil­iar undead frame­work. And while there’s no escap­ing Savage’s tech­ni­cal bril­liance (the char­ac­ter work alone is seri­ous­ly good), what sells him as a real voice to be reck­oned with is just how mal­leable he under­stands the genre nuts-and-bolts to be.

“Genre doesn’t need to do any­thing,” says Sav­age, ​“but it can be an incred­i­ble means of dis­cussing or dis­till­ing an issue. Attack­ing a real-world top­ic through para­ble is often a much more impact­ful way of engag­ing with the idea. Hor­ror specif­i­cal­ly has the abil­i­ty to bypass the brain and hit you right in the gut. That’s how opin­ions are formed – not through facts but emo­tion.” Dawn of the Deaf is a film that screams diver­si­ty, in both its char­ac­ters, and the very way it han­dles old-school hor­ror. It’s built from the ground up not to tit­il­late, but emote, and in the process, it rean­i­mates the famil­iar, though fair­ly strug­gling, social­ly-con­scious zom­bie movie, in a very con­tem­po­rary way.

And if it’s these attempts to reshape and update genre that we’re ulti­mate­ly look­ing for, then Kate Herron’s pos­i­tive­ly bonkers short Smear sits at the very top of the pile. A bright-eyed, bright-green, fla­men­co-infused mad­house of ten­ta­cle-laden (and very, very fun­ny) vagi­na mon­sters, it’s the total antithe­sis of safe, by-the-book genre film­mak­ing; absolute­ly the last thing you would ever expect from a mon­ster movie, or a body hor­ror, or even just a fem­i­nist com­e­dy. Yet it remains the very best of all of these things.

“There are cer­tain con­ven­tions that you can pay trib­ute to which genre fans will love,” says Her­ron, ​“but for me, the fun part in writ­ing in genre is twist­ing those rules to your voice and updat­ing them. It’s like a camp­fire sto­ry you can pass down from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion, it keeps some of the same struc­ture but then each new sto­ry­teller puts their spin on it.” There’s cer­tain­ly no deny­ing that Smear plays with those rules, enter­tain­ing some and rip­ping oth­ers to total shreds. It’s a stage for Herron’s own, much kook­i­er and well-refined com­ic touch, and the result is an absolute mas­ter­class in silli­ness – a sar­cas­tic dig at fem­i­nine wor­ries cranked all the way up to 11.

The buck doesn’t stop at the bor­der line either. As much as British tal­ent is lead­ing the charge, across the globe it’s a sim­i­lar sto­ry. And it doesn’t get more primed and ready than San­ti­a­go C Tapia and Jes­si­ca Cur­tright, alums of the 2017 SXSW Film Fes­ti­val. A Peru­vian-Amer­i­can Har­vard grad, and a world-renowned stage cos­tume design­er respec­tive­ly, the pair nabbed the atten­tion of Blum­house pres­i­dent Couper Samuel­son (exec pro­duc­er on Jor­dan Peele’s Get Out) to pro­duce their lat­est short, and it’s eas­i­ly one of the most unhinged things you’ll see this decade.

It Began With­out Warn­ing is just six relent­less­ly bloody min­utes long, and starts right slap bang in the mid­dle of its main event. It’s total­ly unapolo­getic in its genre ground­ing, but hap­pi­ly bins the clas­sic build-reveal struc­ture, throw­ing in instead, a wan­der­ing cam­era that’s con­stant­ly slam­ming face-first into the action. It’s noth­ing but non-stop, hard­core, domes­ti­cal­ly-framed vio­lence, because there is quite lit­er­al­ly, no time or mon­ey for either of them to allow for any­thing else. The very struc­ture of the duo’s film is what’s doing the talk­ing, so it’s impos­si­ble not to listen.

Some even seem to be drift­ing beyond just the cult scene too. Moin Hussain’s kitchen-sink chiller Real Gods Require Blood – anoth­er genre-stud­ded stand­out that lumps Andrea Arnold with Clive Bark­er in ​’90s work­ing-class Man­ches­ter – reached the sun­ny heights of Cannes last year. It goes to show that this next gen­er­a­tion of genre film­mak­ers are any­thing but pre­dictable – they’re not so much tear­ing up the rule-books as they are writ­ing their own addendums.

“Hav­ing a range of diverse voic­es is not only vital in rep­re­sent­ing the world we live in but also for chal­leng­ing our per­spec­tives on how we under­stand it,” Her­ron riffs on the tip­ping scales of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, round­ing off what is sure to be the bat­tle-cry of this new class of Cro­nen­bergs, Car­pen­ters and, dare we say, Yuz­nas. New voic­es, with big­ger, more social­ly-rel­e­vant sto­ries to tell, in the same old bat­tle­grounds we all know and love.