PUFF X

PUFF X
A Decade of the Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival

Get your tickets HERE

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, Staff Writer and Podcast Director

Ten of anything is quite a milestone. We count by tens after all, so doing something ten times or, in the case of the Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival doing it for ten years, is nothing to sneeze at. I've covered PUFF for a few years, and they always showcase a wide assemblage of titles, both features and shorts, that might otherwise fly under the radar. I'm very much looking forward to what they've got in store for this year.

With these sorts of articles, I would usually single out a few features to highlight. I'm not going to do that here because A) PUFF is relatively small, so there's only a handful of features to begin with, and B) I looked into all of them and they all look pretty interesting, so why don't I just walk you through what this year's fest has to offer:

Wednesday, Oct. 1st:

The fest kicks off with a filmmaker meet-up featuring a panel discussion led by local filmmaker and Drexel’s Westphal College professor David Greenberg.

Thursday, Oct. 2nd:

The films begin on the 2nd with a double feature cohosted by Girls Like Horror beginning with You Know What You Are (dir. Rose Trimboli), a vampire horror-drama (produced by MJ contributor Shayna Davis). I was already interested in YKWYA after speaking to Shayne about it briefly earlier this year, and its teaser trailer, which features a young woman sitting on a bench and briefly remembering some past violence in a terrible flash, is so stylish I can't help but be intrigued.

A screening of 1985's The Oracle (dir. Roberta Findlay), where a spirit reaches out to a young woman for help solving its murder, follows and I was pleasantly surprised by a few things: it looks a little janky, it appears to be a Christmas (and maybe even a New Year's) movie, and there is a reliance on sickly, bright green light throughout, which is a cinematic affectation I always love. I'm a big fan of alternative holiday viewing, so I was sold almost immediately.

Friday, Oct. 3rd:

Friday features two films from PUFF alumni: Robbie Banfitch returns with a new found footage film, Tinsman Road. Its teaser trailer is primarily a shot of a ballerina music box silhouetted against a wall with footage projected on it, and paired with audio alluding to the film focusing on a missing young woman. It ends with the phrase "Sorrow is Terror", which is heartbreaking, chilling, and fascinating in equal measure.

I've actually seen Alex Phillips' latest, Anything That Moves, and it's tonally very different from what I was expecting. A messily ambitious film (complimentary) about love and sexuality set amidst a giallo-esque murder spree, ATM will likely leave you smiling and satisfied, if somewhat bewildered.

Saturday, Oct. 4th:

As the late, great DMX said, "X gon' give it to ya", and PUFF X is definitely giving it on Saturday. The most packed day of the fest this year boasts five features. Projection (dirs. Evan Samaras & George Scoufaras) seems to be the story of an aspiring screenwriter making his dream project alongside, and forgive me if I have this wrong, the spirit of his recently-deceased father? And there appears to be some kind of giant-serpent worshipping cult shenanigans, as well. Head Like a Hole (dir. Stefan MacDonald-Labelle) seems to be about a man hired to watch ... a hole, but to paraphrase Twin Peaks, the hole is not what it seems. To be clear, I'm not sure what it really is, but it surely ain't just a hole.

I had heard good things about Pater Noster and the Mission of Light (dir. Christopher Bickel), but nothing could have prepared me for how Extremely My Shit it appears to be: big, colorful, violent, with a story centered around the extremely collectible vinyl record of a long-gone cult that just might not be all that gone. The practical effects look perfectly artisanal (and goopy!), and at one point there's a wild-eyed young man yelling "Fuck your entire generation!", so I ask you: what's not to love?

I wasn't able to find trailers of any kind for two of the films but from what I could find out, they both seem to be right up my alley. Mooch (dir. Jeff Ryan), which follows a slacker golf caddy turned amateur p.i. on a case that "spirals wildly out of control", and is being compared to The Big Lebowski (1998), sounds like a great palate-cleanser to a weekend of films that tend toward darker stuff. Alan at Night (dir. Jesse Swenson) meanwhile starts with a sillier premise, an internet prankster films the unusual behavior of his new roommate, but I anticipate things will get very weird. Since it's the final film of Saturday, I'm guessing it will.

But wait! That's not all! Spread across the rest of the weekend, amidst the features, are a number of blocks of short films. The Bizarre Block caps off the Girls Like Horror night on the 2nd, there's an Animation Shorts block and a Global Grab Bag block on the 3rd, and the Horror Shorts block is nestled in the middle of all those films on the 4th. But all good things must come to an end...

Sunday, Oct. 5th:

Sunday winds the festival down with the Music Videos block and Local Shorts block leading up to the PUFF X Awards ceremony bringing things to a close in the afternoon. The shorts are always a really interesting experience because, though the PUFF crew organize them into these themed blocks, watching them back-to-back can lead to some fun moments of cognitive whiplash. Sometimes it's a better eye-opener than a cup of coffee!

Notably (to me at least) in Jason X (2001), the infamous serial teen-murderer went to space, as one does. Not to overreach for a corny pun, but this year's PUFF X looks equally as out-of-this-world! Get your tickets immediately, or live to know the true feeling of true regret. 

Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival 2024 - Preview

PUFF 9
Sept. 24th - Sept 29th
The Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival returns!

by "Doc" Hunter Bush, contributor, host, and podcast czar

Chockablock with original films of all stripes from gonzo comedy to head-trip horror (and beyoooond!) the spooky season doesn't start for me until the Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival is near. For a ninth year (!!!!!!!!!) the fine folks at PUFF have gathered together a truly, madly, deeply eclectic selection of features, shorts, and music videos into one place, for you. They return this year to Theater Exile for an impressive six-day lineup of screenings and events from Tues. Sept. 24th - Sun. Sept 29th, with the film screenings beginning on Thurs. Sept 26th! The old joke goes: Why was six afraid of seven? Because seven ate (eight) nine. Things would have gone very differently if seven tried to eat PUFF 9, I'm sure.

Join me as I check out PUFF for a ninth glorious, gory-ous, weird and way-out year. Below I've highlighted just a few flicks you may want to make time for. And don't forget to take a gander at everything they've got planned here: PUFF 9.

THURS. Sept. 26th:

Lampir: The Immortal Witch
Directed by Kenny Gulardi
Showtime: 6:45 pm
Buy tickets HERE

I've been in a real vampire headspace this year gearing up for Vamp-tober on the Hate Watch/Great Watch Podcast, so the title Lampir leapt out at me like a ghoul from a tomb. Apparently, if the subtitle is to be believed, the antagonist is an Immortal Witch and not a vampire, but by the time I clocked that fact, it was too late; I was hooked. This Indonesian film follows a group of friends to a pre-wedding photo shoot at an enigmatic villa and the trailer features some really fantastic cinematography! There's a windshield wiper scene transition that legit blew me away! I cannot wait for this one.

FRI. Dept. 27th:

Chainsaws Were Singing
Directed by Sander Maran
Showtime: 10:30 pm
Buy tickets HERE

The trailer for Chainsaws Were Singing states that it has been "in the making" for a decade and, honestly, this seems like a decade's worth of crazy crap (complimentary). This Estonian gonzo, splattery, silly, chainsaw-centric musical looks like nothing else on the PUFF lineup and I have the feeling this will be a real crowd-pleaser to kick your weekend off right!

SAT. Sept. 28th:

Voidcaller
Directed by Nils Alatalo
Showtime: Noon
Buy tickets HERE

I'm a sucker for drug-trip films, because they allow filmmakers to cut loose a little more; arresting visuals, intuitive storytelling, creative edits. In other words: cinema! I'm also drawn to creative black and white photography and stories described as "Lovecraftian" because I'm a sucker for indescribable cosmic horror, kind of especially when done on a smaller budget - again, it forces the filmmakers to be creative! Swedish  flick Voidcaller has a bare-bones description about people suffering from amnesia beginning to suspect they are connected via something cosmic and sinister, but combined with those interest points above means I'll be starting my day the Voidcaller way.

Screening before Voidcaller is an animated short called The One about a man competing against a 30-foot-long monster worm on a dating show. Many of the features have a short film paired with them btw.

Párvulos
Directed by Isaac Ezban
Showtime: 7:00 pm
Buy tickets HERE

I caught this earlier this year as part of my Fantasia International Film Festival coverage and I'm really psyched to see it again! The post-apocalyptic zombie sub-genre might seem as far past its expiration date as the zombies themselves, but Mexican filmmaker Isaac Ezban manages to introduce enough novelty and creativity into the film's clichés and conventions that it feels not just fresh but genuinely exciting! Combining survival horror with an Amblin Entertainment-style approach to family drama, Párvulos ("little ones") is pure genre dynamite!

SUN. Sept. 29th:

Local Block
Showtime: 1:00 pm
Buy tickets HERE

Each day of film screenings at PUFF includes at least one collection of short films - Thursday's Bizarre Block; Friday's Sci-Fi Shorts; and Saturday's Global Grab Bag and Horror Shorts - but the Local Block is always near and dear to my heart. This collection features all shorts made by local filmmakers! How could I NOT love it? This year's assortment features a lucky 13 entries with subjects ranging from misophonia to a four year-old detective. I love the variety and imagination on display in short films, and the PUFF crew always curate a really broad assortment. I hope you'll join me at this year's festival to appreciate all the hard work of the filmmakers and organizers alike!

The 9th Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival runs from Sept. 24th - Sept 29th. Get tickets HERE.

Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival 2023 - Preview

Philly Unnamed Film Festival
8th annual - 2023
Preview

By “Doc” Hunter Bush, staff writer and podcast czar

Get ready to start your spooky season with Philadelphia’s premier genre- and independent film -friendly film showcase: PUFF! For their eighth year, the Philly Unnamed Film Festival is bringing an eclectic assortment of films to South Philadelphia for anyone who wants to enjoy them. PUFF will run from Weds, Sept. 27th to Sun, Oct 1st. I’ve perused the trailers for the films listed (most can be found on the PUFF YouTube channel) so I can give you an idea of what will be available on each of the fest days. I’ll provide the ticket link at the bottom of course, but before that let’s see what’s on offer.

Sept 27th:

The festival kicks off with Caddy Hack (2023), a film that asks the questions: What if the gopher from Caddyshack (1980) was supernaturally evil? and What if there were a lot of them? During a prestigious golf tournament, caddy after caddy are turning up dead from “mutated” gopher attacks and it’s up to the surviving caddies to stop it to save their jobs and their lives. The trailer is short but packs a goopy punch with plenty of sticky-looking dismemberment, glowing-eyed gopher puppet monsters, a nut shot, and even an exploding head! Caddy Hack probably isn’t a lock for the Best Picture Oscar, but it sure looks like a crowd pleaser!

After the Bizarre Block of short films (experimental shorts that defy easy categorization), PUFF is showing Killer Workout (sometimes known as Aerobicide) the 1987 slasher whodunnit set in the then-novel world of physical fitness. Five years after a young model is burned in a tanning salon incident, her twin sister Rhonda (Marcia Karr) is operating a gym where a string of murders begin to take place. The plot is overly complicated, and the kills are only occasionally gym-centric (multiple are committed with a huge novelty safety pin), but the score is great, and you won’t be the only one laughing.

Sept 28th:

The Horror Shorts block kicks things off, followed by Grieve (2023) from writer/director Robbie Smith. The trailer doesn’t give away much as far as narrative, but has buckets of mood and atmosphere! Sans dialogue, under somber piano music we see disassociated imagery of a man (educated guess is he’s grieving) at a remote house in the woods. The description mentions something about an eldritch presence that feeds on (what else?) grief, so I expect this will deal with unclear reality, and focus heavily on the vibes. I love this kind of thing personally. How about you?

The 2nd film of the day is a 10th Anniversary screening of Motivational Growth (2013), which - if you’re anything like me - you heard about due to the involvement of genre legend Jeffrey Combs. In the film, Ian (Adrian DiGiovanni) is a shut-in and habitual loser who hits his head and starts conversing with the enormous mold culture growing in his bathroom (voiced by Combs). The Mold initially helps Ian improve his life before beginning to steer things in a more sinister direction. This film is an odd-feeling balance between silly and brutal but if you can get on its wavelength, you should have a good time.

Sept 29th:

PUFF kicks the weekend off with a steamy revenge thriller. In Emanuelle’s Revenge (2023), the titular Emanuelle (Beatrice Schiaffino) begins an erotically-tinged cat-and-mouse relationship with a wealthy playboy (Gianni Rosato) after his obsession and abuse leads to the death of a young model. I don’t know how graphic this abuse might be, so if you’re especially sensitive to these themes, you might not want to start your day with this one, but - given the title - I’m guessing the bad guy is gonna get his comeuppance. In case that sweetens the pot.

After the Global Grab Bag (an assortment of international shorts) comes writer/director Nick Verdi’s Sweet Relief (2023). The trailer is slim on story, but there are flashes of knife-based violence, a man guiltily emptying a large duffel bag, and a trio of young women all in the woods of New England. There’s also a person online dubbed “Sweet Angel” who appears to be a mouse-man of some kind, who is also briefly seen in the woods. The whole thing happens under a nursery rhyme about dealing with grief. Nick’s previous film, Cockazoid - which I saw at last year’s PUFF and reviewed on MovieJawn - is an intense and fascinating spiral into a fragile male psyche, so I’m interested to see how much this film makes use of its female protagonists. This seems like a potent viewing experience.

Friday closes out with Hunting for the Hag (2023?) a found footage excursion into the woods of Illinois to find the Hawthorne Hag. This looks a bit like The Blair Witch Project (1999) - hand held camera, three friends (though they’re all women here), some of whom are skeptical, etc. - and maybe that’s all it is. And maybe that’s enough for you (there are some die-hard found footage fans out there, bless them) but the last time I thought a film screening at PUFF looked kind of basic, it was Echoes of Fear (2018) and the third act blew me away. Obviously I’m hoping for something like that here.

Sept 30th:

Saturday at PUFF is jam-packed! Beginning with the Local Block (short films from the Philly area), the first feature is Scream Therapy (2023), a horror comedy from writer/director Cassie Keet. When five thirty-something BFFs head to the desert for a weekend of restorative scream therapy (as well as drinking and drugs), they end up in the sights of an “incel cult” with a looming human sacrifice deadline. This has one really solid joke in the trailer, and the set up seems like it should be both kinda vicious and pretty funny.

Enter the Clones of Bruce (2023) plays next, a documentary about the unusual phenomenon of Bruce Lee-alikes. At the time of his death in 1973, Bruce Lee was just about to break big in America. For a while, his previous films were licensed and re-released to feed fans’ desire for more Bruce Lee movies, but after they had run out, studios turned to more duplicitous means. Hiring martial artists that “looked like” Bruce Lee (re: they were Asian) and giving them stage names like Bruce Li, Bruce Le, Bruce Lai, and Dragon Lee, genre film producers pumped out so many Lee-alikes that - as someone in the trailer points out - some people thought “Bruce Lee” was a character like Sherlock Holmes, played by different actors. This subject is endlessly fascinating to me, and this doc offers some of the “clones” the ability to speak on their times subbing for Bruce Lee, which sounds incredible!

The third film of the day, Psychosis (2023) caught my attention like a fish hook, with dramatic, unique imagery and a mix of black & white and full color footage. Described as a cross between Darren Aronofsky’s Pi (1998) and Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly (book 1977 / film 2006), this seems like a w-i-l-d time. When a man (Derryn Amoroso) who experiences auditory hallucinations is drawn into the orbit of a deranged bargain bin batman vigilante (Pj van Gyen) and a hypnotic guru (Adam MacNeill), reality appears to become unstable. There’s violence, mind control, potential supernatural elements; this looks like a real kitchen sink film and I. am. here for it!

The next film is an as-yet-unannounced Mystery Movie (exciting!), before the night closes out with a screening of T Blockers (2023), the third feature from 18 year old Alice Maio Mackay! When a trans filmmaker and her friends find an old horror film that predicts the future, only they know that their town is being taken over by ancient parasites. Now they’ll have to deal with the problem if they want to get back to partying. This seems like exactly the blood-and-neon soaked way you’d wanna end your evening.

Oct 1st:

The final day of PUFF 8 kicks off with the Music Videos block, followed by an afternoon screening of the 2001 - I kid you not - masterpiece that is Josie and the Pussycats! When sinister record label MegaRecords needs a new band with which to spread their subliminal advertising, they choose the titular trio of girl power pop punks (Rachael Leigh Cook, Rosario Dawson, and Tara Reid), setting off an anti-capitalist adventure comedy with a soundtrack full of ear worms that will get stuck in your head - in a non-sinister way - for days! Legitimately a great cult film.

The fest comes to a close with Hist-o-Rama 3D!: It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time (2023), a collection of outdated industrial and educational short films converted into 3D to, and I quote, “given an otherworldly dimension, allowing the past to reach out and touch us in ways their creators never imagined.” I don’t really know what that means in an exact way, but it sure sounds interesting.

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I’ve never had a bad time at a PUFF screening. The organizers are friendly, funny, and welcoming to both the audience and, frequently, filmmakers. The vibes, as they say, are impeccable. Please support PUFF whenever and however possible and that includes treating yourself to some of the screenings mentioned above! I don’t think you’ll regret it.





PUFF 8 will run from Weds, Sept. 27th to Sun, Oct 1st.
Tickets are available HERE.

"COCKAZOID" (2022)

Cockazoid (2022)
Written by Nick Verdi, B.R. Yeager
Directed by Nick Verdi
Starring Jimmy Laine, Ethan Hansen, Franklin Statz
Running time 1 hour, 26 minutes

By “Doc” Hunter Bush, MJ Podcast Czar

It’s finally turning cold in Philadelphia after a unseasonably late turn from the warm weather. And oddly I find my mind returning to a flick I caught a few months back at this year’s Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival. Cockazoid is a very uncomfortable film, as emotionally cold as the Massachusetts landscape it takes place in, but I find it exceedingly fascinating. It’s been sitting in the back of my mind since the screening ended, a sinister hum undermining my every quiet moment.

Cockazoid is the brainchild of director/co-writer Nick Verdi (co-written with author B.R. Yeager) and it’s …unsettling to say the least. Andrew (Jimmy Laine) is a loner. A disaffected young man who, it is obvious from the film’s opening moments, has become untethered from reality. He travels back to his hometown using a family tragedy as an excuse but his ultimate goal is to kill all the white men (not unlike himself) in Massachusetts. While he doesn’t even come close to achieving his goal, he comes a lot closer than most people ever would.

Now, I’m going to say something that might sound really odd: This movie is very funny. It’s super dark in tone, and filled with an almost continual sense of dread. The kills in the movie are brutal and the kind of low-budget explicit where the unrealism of them makes them more horrific - watching Andrew attempt to dismember a victim’s corpse in the woods with just a pocket knife and some random stick he found on the ground is kind of nauseating but it’s also hilarious in its futility. It’s why butchers don’t cut meat with a Swiss Army knife. It’s only because this is a film; because you can see that the torso he’s mutilating is fake, that it’s funny at all.

There’s a kind of sick humor in Andrew himself. He’s so cartoonishly incompetent and socially impotent that to even compare him to any type of specific mindset feels like an insult. He’s a cautionary tale. What sadly occasionally does really happen when extreme, deep-seeded mental illness and the kind of self-aggrandizing keyboard warrior mindset get too high on their own supply and think their fantasies of being some kind of philosophical warrior for a higher truth are in any way connected to reality. It’s the kind of thinking we see whenever any mass shooter or aspirant serial killer’s manifesto comes to light.

That’s also what I found most interesting in Cockazoid. Andrew’s inner monologues contain just glimpses into his beliefs, if you can even consider them actual, capital-B “Beliefs”. These brief bits of his headspace seem as unrelated to each other as they are to reality. One moment he’s rattling off statistics: how many white men live in Massachusetts, how much square footage the state has available for him to bury his army of victims, etc., and in the next moment he’s fantasizing about retiring to the afterlife to live in a mansion with a roof shingled in their teeth. This seemingly constant flux of his core motivation makes Andrew both more frightening and more pathetic in equal measure. Does he just want to kill for the sake of killing or is he hiding behind the scapegoat of a nebulous “greater purpose”.

I’m trying not to overuse the word “fascinating”. Just because it’s bad writing, not because I’m worried what you’ll think of my being fascinated by Cockazoid. I think the point of Cockazoid is to be fascinated by it. And disgusted, in equal measure.

The filmmaking is incredibly well done. Everything, everywhere feels cold. There’s hardly a moment where the tension or discomfort is allowed to ease up. The neighborhoods, woods, and fields of Massachusetts feel labyrinthine and claustrophobic. There are occasional peeks into Andrew’s early life that are shown as degraded and warped VHS home videos in his mind’s eye, a format that is inherently off-putting no matter what’s shown, but with the feeling of a horrific impending revelation looming, it becomes nail-biting.

Jimmy Laine’s performance as Andrew is just as incredible. There’s something to be said for a performance that isn’t afraid to be ugly that’s absolutely commendable when it fits the subject matter this well. As a character, Andrew has hyped himself up to the point that he almost has to kill someone or else admit that maybe the problem isn’t the entire world, maybe it’s just him. But once he’s done it, he has to justify it, which leads him back to the same place, mentally. And around and around it goes. As a performer, Laine’s large eyes bulge and shift, his motions are ungainly and awkward, the internal struggle he is having is clearly depicted at all times.

Not that I see myself as any great tastemaker, but I hope this article can help generate a little buzz about this film. It really should be seen. I reached out to director Nick Verdi, and as of yet he has gotten no real response about getting Cockazoid any proper distribution, which is honestly a disappointment. It’s not a film for everyone, nor is it one I could see myself rewatching every year - it’s much too unpleasant for that - but it’s still a film I’d like to own. I’d like to be able to show it to people (certain people who would appreciate/could handle it). It’s honestly a masterclass in low-budget filmmaking, in maintaining a very specific tone, in managing that sense of dread; all things that (especially) horror filmmakers should have access to. I hope it becomes more readily available soon.

Just as a footnote: the film’s title, as Verdi explained after the screening, is a derogatory term for white people (a bastardization of “caucasoid”), which I only mention because it’s not explained in the film itself, but I think it’s a fabulously perfect title in how the meaning and the almost creature-like imagery it conjures perfectly coalesce in the themes of the film.

Cockazoid is currently unavailable to view but hopefully that will change.
In the meantime, watch the teaser trailer for Sweet Relief, Nick’s next project, here on YouTube.
Support small films. Long Live the Movies.

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.This piece was written for MovieJawn, a fabulous site where you can find tons of other excellent movie-centric writings, a shop where you can subscribe to the quarterly physical zine, or listen to me on the  Hate Watch/Great Watch  podcast! Support the MovieJawn Patreon here!

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"THE OUTWATERS" (2022)

The Outwaters
Directed & written by Robbie Banfitch
Starring Robbie Banfitch, Angela Basolis, Scott Schamell, Michelle May
Currently unrated
Runtime 1 hour, 40 minutes

“The Outwaters shows that Found Footage is the Haiku of Horror Filmmaking”

By Allison Yakulis & Hunter Bush

Hunter Bush: Filmmakers are always fighting against limitations. Sometimes it’s an idea that can’t be realized, sometimes it’s having a very slim budget, sometimes it’s just scheduling constraints. Regardless, they’re all roadblocks between a filmmaker and their ideal finished project. Creative filmmakers find ways to not just work around their limitations, but to work with them; use these hurdles to their advantage.

Found footage, as a genre, works within limitations. You don’t need professional gear, actors, or cinematography. The almost user-generated nature of the conceit also allows for narrative gaps that can help with pacing and budget. Even still, within the sub genre of found footage, some films are more inventive or innovative than others. With The Outwaters, writer/director/star Robbie Banfitch may have used the limitations of a young filmmaker more creatively than any other example I can call to mind.

Allison Yakulis: To me, found footage is a genre fraught with mediocre efforts. It has enough structure to delineate it as its own genre, is cheap enough that anyone with access to any sort of camera can film in this style, and when actually done well is considered a triumph in monetizing art as it is, again, cheap and accessible to produce. Of course, when it’s done poorly there’s a lot of shaky camera, often in the dark, to hide seams and give the appearance of a novice photographer, and in some of the most egregious instances it breaks the “rules” and depicts sequences that no camera handheld or otherwise could’ve picked up. Found footage is the haiku of horror filmmaking: beautiful in its simplicity when well-executed, but too frequently lackluster or incoherent due in large part to the perception that anybody can do it.

Overall I enjoyed The Outwaters. In fact, I would argue it’s in the top of its genre, on par with films like The Blair Witch Project (1999), Cloverfield (2008), and Host (2020). When this film hits, it hits hard and cuts deep. Is it a perfect film? No, it’s laggy in parts of the third act with a few nighttime sequences that are too dark and chaotic to glean a meaningful understanding of what is actually going on. In these moments it started to lose me as a viewer. Banfitch carefully arranges his setting, characters, goals, and scope, but when given a slow burn setup I expect a splashy, manic ending. An impartial editing for pace would give the drop-at-the-end-of-the-rollercoaster feeling, rather than the emotional whiplash I felt.

There are moments in this movie that are so arresting, so wickedly gleeful that it’s going to stick with me for years, I can feel it already. 

HB: The basic premise of The Outwaters, just so that we’re all on the same page, is that four friends go into the Mojave desert to film a music video: aspiring director Robbie (Banfitch), his brother Scott (Scott Schamell) who will function as an assistant, hair & makeup stylist Ange (Angela Basolis), and Michelle (Michelle May) the video’s star. Michelle is a singer, and the quartet’s plan is to just film a bunch of beautiful footage of a glamorous looking Michelle in the natural splendor of the Mojave.

Low budget found footage can get a little repetitive, right? There’s usually only a few locations, because they’re shooting on the cheap. Outwaters almost suffers from this but, for my mileage, every time we repeated a gag or location, Banfitch at least tried to make it feel different. The flick is divided up into three memory cards recovered after the film’s events, and things build in a very by-the-book manner. The first card is all preliminaries; getting to know the characters and how they interact. Card two is getting to the desert, filming a music video, and some spookiness that’s light enough to be laughed off the next day. Card three is not just the most concentrated supernatural madness, but it keeps changing; recontextualizing what I thought was going on. To be clear, what I mean is not just what my guesses were for what the movie was, but actually changing what I thought things I had already seen meant.

Early on, having only seen the trailer (which to be fair is mostly darkness, blood and yelling), after the characters find a fire ax stuck into the crest of a low hill, I figured that I was settling in for a The Hills Have Eyes type survival horror. That was a guess and it was wrong. That’s not what I’m talking about. The reliance on darkness (full dark, no stars; absolute blackness) means your mind’s eye is taking fragments of shapes glimpsed in a flashlight beam and trying to use the sonic information being presented (footfalls, scraping across the desert floor, yelling, panting, *noises*, etc) to form an image of what might be happening. Then something else would happen that would change all those mental images. This third act basically functions as that parable of the blind men and the elephant, which I think is fascinating. I won’t go into specifics I guess because The Outwaters should be experienced with the least foreknowledge possible. 

AY: Hunter had also mentioned in our discussions that the conceit of filming a music video allows for more artistic flairs than many other found footage-type films. When you make one of your characters a filmmaker or cinematographer, that can be a really smart move to allow some nice, attractive, old-school camera use to establish setting and dole out some eye-candy before things get weird and shaky. He noticed it, and yes, I really dug that too. It not only fleshes out a character but it gives these early sequences an excuse to be fun and beautiful and light and arresting, improving the overall visual quality of the film and providing a nice counterpoint to the darkness and gore in the latter half.

Tropes or pitfalls, you decide. It’s these very things that take me out of other found footage films that The Outwaters generally executes or subverts pretty well. It makes a lot of smart choices, selecting a beautiful location that photographs excellently and feels remote, going for practical effects and sharp editing, often using suggestion and indirect shooting to let your imagination do the heavy lifting.

How do you feel about found footage as a genre? Do you prefer it steeped in realism? A way to tell a story creatively and within a rigid framework? Or do you find it a difficult style to work within/enjoy as a viewer?

HB: What Allison said about Found Footage being the Haiku of Horror Filmmaking is absolutely spot-on. With The Outwaters, if you get too hung up on the narrative you’d be missing the point. Robbie Banfitch has crafted something that seems very simple, but he’s gotten every ounce of impact from it. What it might lack for you in traditional logic it more than makes up for as a masterwork of form. It truly shows that with enough creativity and sheer will, you can manage fantastic things even when working within constraints.

AY: I think Hunter and I both recommend this movie and I agree that it should be viewed without knowing specifics - it is at its best and most fun when it blindsides you. I think where our feelings diverge is in this third act. I was anticipating similar clarity as in earlier sequences and felt restless when presented with lots of sound and little picture (the lagginess I mentioned earlier) - I didn’t have enough suggestion as to what was going on so these parts started to lose me rather than sharpen my nerves. Yet they would be interspersed with enough weirdness or clear daylight views or, yes, references to earlier locations or events that I could reorient myself into what was still a very surreal “distemporal” narrative; in fact, it really stuck the landing for me and I walked out happy at the end. In summation I think our feelings differ as to whether The Outwaters is a credit to, or the exception in, its horror subgenre.

The Outwaters should be available on Screambox in January 2023, after a limited theatrical run.

Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival, year 7 - 6 Shorts from PUFF 7

6 Short Films from Year 7 at Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival

By Allison Yakulis, Staff Writer & “Doc” Hunter Bush, Podcast Czar

Forty-five short films, two featurettes, and one music video. Spread out across the four days of this year’s Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival, interspersed between the eight features, Allison & Hunter took in 45 shorts, 2 featurettes, and 1 video. A lot of hard work went into, well definitely most of them, and it would feel wrong not to shed a little light on at least a few that really stood out.

The majority of the shorts at PUFF are segmented into different blocks, presented on different days: The Bizarre Block (films which defy easy categorization), The Local Block, The International Block, and the Horror Block, with a few stragglers settled in between the features as palate cleansers. The featurettes (Killer Cup (2002), Zombie Love Slave (1999)) were a bit longer than the traditional shorts but not quite feature length, and the music video, for those curious, was a surfy instrumental - “Harper’s Bizarre” by Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.

Programming a short film block is a bit like making a mixtape, I imagine. You have to control the tonal flow from one to the next, as well as consider how close together you plan similar-seeming entries. We have to give a big, grateful shout out to Maria Colella from PUFF who programmed all the shorts blocks this year, and sifted through 150-ish shorts to find those that made the cut! Great work!

Below are a selection of our favorites:

Ambitus (dir. Louise Mejstelman) - 15 mins

This bittersweet character sketch filmed and set in Paris follows an elderly trumpet player as he struggles to finish composing a piece of music to honor his late lady love, a pianist. Ambitus highlights the pain of love and loss, the fragility of our ever aging bodies, and the immense effort involved in honing a talent and creating something beautiful, and the short itself is beautifully crafted and quite moving. It was selected by PUFF 7 attendees as best short, I’d say deservedly. - AY

From Water Comes Melon (dir. Micah Vassau) - 13 mins

I don’t really know how to accurately describe the vibe of From Water Comes Melon, or really honestly what it’s saying, but I enjoyed it from start to finish. A young lady on a beach finds a watermelon floating ashore but doesn’t know what it is, so she takes it to …a goddess perhaps? The setting and their modes of dress seem almost post-apocalyptic - the young woman is nude but for an elaborate headdress of flowers and n-95 masks over her eyes; the goddess is bedecked in a wedding dress, and an even more elaborate floral headdress with three melting ice cream cones in her hair. It’s chaotic, but I love it so - but then the young woman leaves the beach and enters a modern restaurant kitchen where an older woman, recognizing the watermelon is at its peak ripeness, cuts it into 4 quarters. The long, half moon grin-shaped kind that you hold with two hands to eat or (as the young woman chooses to do) sit down slowly upon in what is definitely someone’s fetish. The short ends with the woman lamenting the lost melon on the beach only to see a dozen new melons have washed up. Is director Micah Vassau commenting on loss, or scarcity; dating or sex? Is this a new creation myth? I have no idea, but I loved it. - HB

Billy Kills The Internet (dir. Lon Strickland) - 25 minutes

The universe is in danger from a viral or perhaps fungal threat known as The Internet, an insidious pestilence that once appeared to be a positive technological progression but has since given rise to terrible nonsense and strife. The very young Billy and his compatriots (a couple of puppets and an actual baby) must brave the heavily green screened vacuum of space to obtain the only weapon that can kill the internet from the god Vishnu, and then go do the dang thing. With that frenetic-but-underfunded aesthetic reminiscent of Adult Swim or even more prototypically something on public access cable, Billy Kills The Internet knows its strengths and its limitations and navigates them expertly to deliver a charmingly weird adventure story. Also William Strickland (the titular Billy) delivers an excellent performance that is convincing and earnest despite his young age. It’s a joyful and fun watch. - AY

The Woodsman (dir. Kyle Kuchta) - 13 mins

Bernie is a 3rd generation Christmas Tree salesman and his family’s lot have a streak going: selling every tree on the lot by Christmas each year for 93 years running. With the camera in the perspective of the customers, we see Bernie sell off 2 of his remaining 3 trees with offhand, rumpled charm until only Gertrude (yes, he names the trees) is left. Things get tense as midnight nears and Bernie makes a generous but ultimately futile gesture and pays the price. I would have loved another 10 minutes or so of this, to build the backstory a little, to imply why what happens to Bernie indeed must happen, but the jovial-yet-desperate lead performance from John R. Smith Jr. adds a lot of heart and comedy to the slim narrative. As a bonus, with its horror/comedy/xmas mix, it would pair perfectly with a screening of Gremlins. - HB

The Order (dir. Eric Swiz) - 8 mins

In this age of Grubhub, UberEats, GoPuff, Instacart, and likely a few others I’m forgetting, it’s pretty dang easy to order food from wherever to wherever without having to do much more than tap on the screen of the phone in your pocket. So why not mobilize all the power of the delivery gig economy to do something just a shade more evil than claiming your drivers to be “independent contractors” so you don’t have to provide benefits or guarantee base pay while you levy hefty service fees on small business restaurants? Perhaps to tweak a few ones and zeros to allow for something unusual to be delivered. Something…sacrificial? With decent effects and a confidently executed concept, The Order delivers a wicked punchline to its very mundane and familiar setup. - AY

Greed (dir. Amber Danger Johnson) - 4 mins

This is what’s termed a micro short for being under 5 minutes long, but in that time, Amber Danger Johnson and star Joy Dolo deliver a very interesting piece. Dolo, in abstract geometric face paint sits at an elaborately set table. A banquet lies before her; all golden plates of food and goblets of wine (presumably). She speaks, addressing all women with a message to no longer settle for allowing others to tell them when they have had enough, encouraging them to decide for themselves. Interspersed with this, and punctuated by deep rattling bursts of music (think: that one big “BWOMP” note that’s in almost every movie trailer) is text on screen, telling the men that their time is up. It ends with the audio and visual messages nearly harmonizing to communicate one thing: An era of chaos begins now. I loved it. The addition of the text took something that could otherwise seem preachy pr pretentious and made it genuinely funny. I imagined this as the cold open to a gender-divided version of something like The Purge, and now that’s kind of all I want to see. Why not? - HB

It is a point of pride for the Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival’s crew to highlight local talent and look for hidden gems among the year’s festival submissions when deciding what to show - and the shorts blocks exemplify this intent. If you want to see who’s making films in Philly that are worth watching, PUFF’s got them. If you want to see little snippets of weirdness from overseas, PUFF’s got them. If you want to see things that are too extreme for VOD or mainstream distribution and this might just be your only chance to watch, PUFF’s got them. Not only that, but they keep getting better every year with more mind blowing finds and stronger submissions. Passionate people run this fest, and we all know passionate people make the best stuff. Thank you for reading. Hope we see you at PUFF next year!

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This piece was written for MovieJawn, a fabulous site where you can find tons of other excellent movie-centric writings, a shop where you can subscribe to the quarterly physical zine, or listen to me on the  Hate Watch/Great Watch  podcast! Support the MovieJawn Patreon here!
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PUFF Postscript - 2020

Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival
PUFF Postscript 2020

by Hunter Bush


With the news that Cineworld would be shuttering their theaters until 2021 coming out over the weekend, digital film festivals are looking more and more like the new status quo as opposed to a stop-gap solution. To that end, I sincerely hope you took advantage of the PUFF 2020 screenings over the weekend because things like PUFF - the Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival - are important for filmmakers who don’t have studio backing. If you didn’t, you missed out on some great stuff, but we are trying our best to regularly cover similar fests here at Moviejawn.

PUFF 2020 - PUFF Preview

Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival
PUFF Preview 2020

by Hunter Bush



Last year, I was privileged to go to the 4th annual Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival with my partner Allison Yakulis and interact with a great group of people who were all passionate about genre films great and small. From the festival organizers to the filmmakers on hand to the audience members. I was even introduced to what ended up being my favorite movie of last year, The Invisible Mother. It is currently, to the best of my knowledge, sadly unavailable (but if you’re reading this Shudder, it’d be right up your alley) but I digress. My experience at PUFF was fantastic! I saw a dozen different pictures (and twice as many shorts), met and interacted with some wonderful people and got to explore a part of the city I’m otherwise rarely in.

Obviously, due to *gestures at viral pandemic* all this, PUFF was forced to go digital this year and has a smaller roster of films at hand, but I’m sure they’re no less interesting. Let’s take a look at the available trailers and see if we can’t find my next favorite movie of the year!

Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival - PUFF Part 2: Postscript

The films that screen at the Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival, by and large, are difficult to pin down. Organizers prefer to think of it as an "Alternative" film festival, though a lot of the movies do tend to fall under the umbrella of "horror". But you may as well just classify them all as "movies" and call it a day for how unspecific that is. Hence the "Unnamed" part of the PUFF moniker; it's not just that they were too lazy to come up with a name.

Allison & Hunter were lucky enough to, between them, see all the films great and small shown at PUFF proper. As mentioned in PUFF Part 1 - Prologue, the short films on hand were largely broken up into blocks, though there were a few that played before the features like a film appetizer. Below we've got a round-up of what we saw and, in brief, what we dug about it:

Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival - PUFF Part 1: Prologue

PUFF 2019 Preview
“Allison & Hunter Write a PUFF Piece! Part 1 - Prologue”

For this, the fourth annual Philadelphia Unnamed Film Festival (or PUFF), Moviejawn contributors Allison Yakulis and Hunter Bush are going to check out all the delicious independent genre films and shorts that are being screened in our own backyard. PUFF will be rocking and rolling from September 26th to September 29th at the 2223 Theater in Fishtown. There’s also a pre-PUFF event on September 25th that will include a screening of The Blair Witch Project with director Eduardo Sánchez in attendance (it’s the 20th anniversary of the film!) and a screening of Legacy Award to Exhumed Films winner Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural with its director Richard Blackburn there to introduce the film. Lemora is also going to be screened in 16mm, which is rad for all you format freaks out there.

PUFF is still growing, and this year will be screening 10 feature length films. There are also over 20 short films, broken up into blocks (you can catch Bizarre Shorts on Friday, International Shorts on Saturday, and Local Shorts on Sunday). Allison & Hunter couldn’t find a listing of the shorts that will be featured, but we did get to check out some synopses and trailers for the feature length films. Between the two of us we’re hoping to bring you full coverage of the festival proper after PUFF packs up.

So consider this a PUFF Prologue and if you’re in the area and want to check it out, tickets are available HERE. We’ll be back after the fest with some thoughts on the movies and the event itself. For now, read on to see what we’re looking forward to: