And if you don’t know what film festival I’m talking about by now, peeps, you just haven’t been paying attention. (Look around the page. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.) There weren’t a lot of monsters on display, and the ones there were constituted phantasms and ghosts, a zombie here and there; there were plenty of serial killers, but no monsters, proper. No beasts. Of the two exceptions, BEAST was by far the shortest and the weakest. One of the minute-long vignettes from 60 SECONDS TO DIE, it featured a guy being held prisoner by a feral, werewolf-like creature that may or may not have been a metaphor for his overbearing girlfriend, or hostile femininity in general. Honestly I didn’t really get it, so I’m guessing, here.
The full-length VOLUMES OF BLOOD features 4 shorts, each the mental creation of a college student taking part in an experiment to see if they can create a new urban legend. (Then the movie takes a big swerve, but I don’t want to give too much away.) One of these stories, all of which take place inside a library—and yes, libraries CAN be spooky at night—features a prank gone awry, in which a girl working late on a term paper is menaced by a fanged, furry intruder. Taken by itself or as a part of the whole, it’s an effective little chiller, monster included.
