Lest you all think I'm mired in the cult film wasteland, I'll my thoughts on a film I watched just last night (Admittedly film might be a bit much; it's really a short that clocks in at a quick 32ish minutes, but still...)

A bit of background: a few weeks ago some friends and I watched The Ruins. I mostly enjoyed it (the book is better. Have you heard that one before?), enough so that I ended up tracking down some info on the direct, Carter Smith.

Turns out that Smith is a relatively new filmmaker who cut his teeth as a high fashion photographer before debuting a short film at Sundance. And that film was Bugcrush. It piqued my interest when I stumbled across this little bitty on one of my favourite horror blogs campblood.org: "Bugcrush has disturbed gay film fest viewers all over the place."

Gay whaaaa?! Colour me intrigued (I'm always up for some homo horror, so much so that I've sometimes found myself reduced to the homo-lite works of director horrible David DeCoteau...shudder). So I set about tracking down this little film to see what it was that was so disturbing.

Lo and behold the word that best describes the short is disturbing. I'm honestly not sure how it plays with straight audiences, but the metaphor isn't too deep under the surface. Here's the plot, sans spoilers: Ben is a high school student with a crush on new boy Grant. After watching him from afar, Ben finally gets up the courage to approach Grant, who asks if he wants to hang out and get high that night.

I honestly can't much more than that without giving too much away, save to say that the whole short is steeped in dread and atmosphere and that both aspects of the title play an important role. One of the reviews that I immediately tracked down made a point of referencing the acting and the dialogue of the teens, which really quite good.

Again, I can't say much else except to say that I hope you guys check it out so that we can discuss it (the ending seems to be a point of contention for people who either don't get it or hate it). Either way the film is worth checking out and should be more available on a more accessible venue instead of being stuck on Boys Life 6 (ugh...gay anthologies).

Check it out here (in two parts...and kinda dark)