In a stuffy, dimly lit room in the back of Exeter Pheonix, the audience was sat in an anticipatory silence for an evening introduced as ‘films too weird to be seen in the daylight’. The collection of ‘Something Feels Off’ shorts lived up to their preface from the very beginning.

Nick Blake’s The Viewing is a mind bending, plot twisting indulgence. The two lone characters passive aggressively psychoanalyse one another in each room across the ‘viewing’ of a house that is decidedly uncanny. The combined use of uncomfortably angled shots, as well as the aesthetic quality of the set, with vibrant floral wallpapers and a windowless circular room, is reminiscent of a fifties housewife’s mental breakdown, if not of the prowess of those that worked on this film. Its eery disruption of home comforts was intricately constructed, running a cold chill over the audience as the psychological horror unravelled into an unknowing personal navigation of the prospective buyer.

The showing moved quickly into the next film, Skull, directed by Marion Guerrero. The anxieties of the French protagonist, and of many women on a more general level, are captured perfectly through comic metaphors, even with a little dig at Brexit. The awkward first scene of the protagonist showering with a fully dressed pregnant woman squashed into her tiny shower cubicle provoked sporadic giggles from members of the audience. By the time she was ‘caught out’ wearing a new, rather attention grabbing, purple shirt, reflected in the next clip with her face covered in clown makeup, we were all in fits of laughter. With comedic excellence, the film skilfully pokes fun at each complexly human fear and allows for a kind of comfort to the unsure self.

Next came Ryan Mackfall’s The Birdwatcher. This pseudo crime short was characterised by its confident use of visual effects and its nonsensical plot line. Every time I thought I understood the direction it was heading, the film did a complete 180-degree turn, sometimes quite literally as the birdwatcher himself is flipped into an alternate reality. The uncertainty of the site of the malicious intent, likely the mystical figurine that manipulates the albatross, makes the attack particularly ominous. As the only film to fully utilise the surround sound system of Pheonix’s Studio 74, the bird calls emitted from every corner of the room placed the audience as prey in their own seats.

Bulb, directed by Guy Taylor, shone for its dialogue. The uncomfortable scenes of lacklustre discussion across the family dinner table, moving into tense, uncalculated paranoia over the family’s singular lightbulb, emphasises its dichotomies of mental and literal light and dark in the film. Its carefully formed discussion of family power imbalances critiques the complexities of living with abuse. It is a superbly multilayered film.

Lasting only four minutes, and the shortest film in this showing, Gabrielle Hoad’s The Porous Body relied heavily on static clips and images. It appeared as a conjuring poem and images of the supposed spirit medium, as indicated by a black and white, aged photograph before the credits. Its interpretive portrayal was a stark contrast to the plot driven narratives either side of it and was met with a hesitant applause.

Poc’han was directed by Thom Limb, who guided the evening towards environmental considerations. The short focusses on the tracking of the declining puffin population, with moody, desolate images of the Cornish hills and moors. The sticky oil that plagues unexpected spots of the natural environment is a foreboding omen of the destruction to come while the local farmer’s unintelligible speech is disconcerting. The use of flickering images and panicked chases excellently permeated the stagnant warmth of the studio and embedded us in a shroud of tension.

The final film of the evening was Her Babies, directed Letícia Bianco. The Brazilian and Italian collaboration is driven by an uneasy marriage dynamic and an unwitting, slow infection by ‘dirty’ water. It is perhaps a criticism of poor access to clean water, further complicated by a mythologically terrifying water-being that engulfs the victims. The film’s title is only revealed before the credits. As ‘Seus Bebês’ flashes onto the screen, the infected bodies’ reliance on, or control of, the mother is disturbingly clear. The audience is left in darkness, slowly watching the credits roll, beautifully abandoned to the terrors of the unknown.

As the lights came on, the room was strangely still before we all began to grab our belongings. Something was certainly off.

Review by Alex Wildee.