Survival Is Insufficient Shorts (2023) ‘BUFF’ Review: INCUBUS, Content: The Lo-Fi Man, & More

Survival Is Insufficient Shorts (2023) ‘BUFF’ Review: We’re closing out our coverage of this year’s Boston Underground Film Festival with the shorts category, Survival Is Insufficient, which boasts of varied, intriguing entries about protagonists who need to be heard, seen, and understood. Every entry delves into a world that does not intersect with the others. Still, all of these horror short offerings deal with deep-seated terrors that plague humanity on the daily, handled in varying tones, from the slapstick to the deeply disturbing. Among all the shorts programs that premiered at BUFF this year, Survival is Insufficient emerges as the most effective, complete, and startling of the bunch, and here are some of my favorite shorts that dared to do something truly unique.

CONTENT: The Lo-Fi Man

Brian Lonano and Blake Meyers offer a hilariously punk shorts entry with Content: The Lo-Fi Man, which satirizes our current “content”-centered culture where any work of art is a means to garner social currency. In the age of “smash that like button and ring that notification bell,” grounded, nuanced commentary about film or adjacent media is becoming scarcer by the minute.

Lonano and Meyers take the tongue-in-cheek, slapstick route to explore these emerging trends, exposing the bleak, dystopian nature of rampant content consumption and the gradual death of media literacy. Lonano himself stars in this consistently entertaining short, and this ironic self-insert heightens the urgency of the film’s central message: never give up the fight for cinema.

The Lo-Fi man evades the risks of coming off as too self-serious by freely indulging in the bizarre and surreal. The film does so by situating Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo the Iron Man at the center of its narrative. In the fight against mindless content creation, Lonano morphs into an organic entity, The Lo-Fi Man, who stands for pure, guerilla filmmaking. The camera is the weapon bound to bring about much-needed change. The final fight sequence is nothing short of epic, replete with impressive stop-motion animation and practical props and effects. And, oh, watch out for a cool decapitation shot toward the end.

★★★★½

IT TAKES A VILLAGE

Alam Hag’s It Takes a Village functions on the following premise: what if Rosemary’s Baby, but with supportive cult members? The short’s greatest strength is its vibrant, surreal, retro imagery, enhanced by the gorgeous set design and a rather fun and chaotic sequence towards the end. This kind of experience can only be felt, as putting it into words is an exercise in futility. More shorts should embrace this particular brand of whimsy and sport a bonkers storyline that unravels as a delightful pastiche of established cult genre tropes.

★★★

SCOOTER

Chelsea Lupkin etches a tale of revenge and retribution in Scooter, which follows a young woman who is treated rather poorly by her rich, douchebag boyfriend, Heston. Their interactions clearly underline Heston’s ego-centric view of the world, which manifests in ugly ways when he disrespects his girlfriend repeatedly, shames her for her job, and leaves her stranded in the middle of nowhere at night.

Although stumped, our female protagonist makes her way to a 24×7 convenience store after finding a green scooter on the sidewalk and munches on food while chilling on the pavement. “Good for her,” I murmured under my breath, and this was when a huge van with some religious extremists arrived on the scene.

The group of men who stop at the store seem to be up to no good, and our protagonist hears muddled thuds and pleas from inside the van. She inches towards the vehicle against her better judgment, only to find a young woman bound and gagged inside. Panicking, she tries to help her, but is confronted by the men, who claim that the woman is a “demon.”

While this revelation borders on delusional religious ramblings, it turns out to be true — an entity has now been set loose that gorges on men who treat women poorly. After killing the Jesus freaks, our demon is last seen preying on Heston, who definitely has it coming. As our protagonist drives home safely (in the same van that had arrived), Heston seems to be in major trouble. This is cinema!

★★★★

FROM BEYOND

Fredrik S. Hana’s experimental short, From Beyond, is nothing short of a creative marvel. Created with faux-found footage and stellar practical effects, the story unravels like a mockumentary about extraterrestrial life and what could happen if humanity were to make first contact with beings beyond human comprehension successfully.

There’s footage of what seems to be a meteor shower and the remains excavated from the crash, including sentient rock-like masses that breathe, mutate, and hatch into shapeless forms. From Beyond asks pertinent questions about belief, existentialism, and the fate of humanity in relation to other life forms, where the certainty of knowing that we are not alone is bound to change the trajectory of life on earth.

The short expertly balances the tightrope of showing enough to keep us hooked and shrouding these beings from beyond in mystery to deliver a compelling, intriguing experience. Would these beings be a part of everyday ASMR videos? Would we engage in acts of pleasure with these slimy, disgusting alien lifeforms? And would they become a staple in popular media? How would our cultural narrative take shape if that were to happen? There’s also a thread of religious belief that is seen disintegrating with the emergence of a new religion of sorts, where there is no need to put our faiths in an unseen, unknown entity, as the proof of this new form of existence is right before our eyes. Would we experience existential relief or devolve into mass hysteria? The questions are endless and ever-evolving.

★★★★½

INCUBUS

Tito Fernandes tells a harrowing, powerful tale about abuse and sexual assault in INCUBUS, which follows a young woman named Mary, who has managed to evade her abuser and confine herself to her boat home. The atmosphere of fear and paranoia that invades Mary’s world can be felt from the get-go, and her wilful seclusion only heightens her pain and trauma, which manifests in the form of a huge, tentacled monster that preys on her when she’s asleep.

Rarely have metaphorical monsters been used to such great effect, and INCUBUS utilizes claustrophobic camera angles and terror-inducing close-ups to capture the helplessness of sleep paralysis, which is an extension of the very real, horrifying abuse that Mary had to undergo. While her friends and family try to reach her, Mary finds it difficult to escape the monster that hounds her at every corner of her home.

INCUBUS is easily the best shorts entry in the category and manages to truly terrify the viewer. The incubus in question might or might not be real, but the unbearable pain and trauma that a sexual assault survivor has to contend with are very, very real.

Mary feels utterly alone despite having people that care for her and is pushed to the edge when she receives a voice message from her abuser, who has the gall to contact her and say that he’s “sorry” about what happened. The fact that something as heinous as abuse is trivialized by dominant social narratives, where the survivors in question are forced to bear the brunt of societal apathy, doubt, and derision is more horrific than any monster hiding under our beds.

Mary’s solitary battle is a reminder of the harsh, haunting reality of millions of women who are forced to suffer in silence and shamed for daring to speak about the reality of men who perpetrate such inhuman violence and walk away unscathed.

★★★★

Survival Is Insufficient Shorts premiered at the 2023 Boston Underground Film Festival Tickets can be bought HERE.