A Short Film Review
Back in September, I had the opportunity to visit a small theatre here in Ottawa, Canada. I received an invitation from Ottawa native and indie filmmaker, Adam Kirkey.
Adam had arranged to have his short film Greed & Gore screened in a historic Ottawa theatre, The Mayfair.
Adam and various cast and crew, as well cast and crew from two other short films Adam worked on, were all there.
One short, was a sixty second short film made for a competition that Adam was director of photography on, Bee Hive.
The second was short film titled The Trunk, directed by Adam Laidlaw, where Adam again served as Cinematographer. The look and feel of this film is a good introduction to Adam’s style, and a preview of what was to come for Greed & Gore. The Trunk follows a young girl and her father as they uncover a trunk in the woods and bring it home. At home, the daughter’s curiosity gets the best of her and she opens the trunk, releasing an evil entity. After it was over, I was excited to see what Adam did in the director’s chair.
It was time for the main event, and the short film started. We follow a band of robbers who have taken a hostage with them to an abandoned house. A team member leaves. As they wait for their return, the criminals are taken out one by one.
Simple? Yes. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. We have a masked killer, attacking and murdering his victims in brutal fashion. With gore being in the title, expectations were high. The full budget is up in the air, Adam estimated around maybe $10,000 or less. Beautiful cinematography and graphic violence gives the film an engaging experience. The gore is intense and extremely well done. With a mix of practical effects and some computer compositing, the blood, the guts all of it looked amazing.
The film is too short to do much exploring into origins. Adam and Writer Mathieu Lamarche explain, “He just didn’t want people on his property.” See what I mean? Simple and very effective. This movie brings us back to the basics of the slasher film. We have a masked killer that seems unstoppable and plenty of gore. At the end of the day, I was happy there wasn’t much else to the killer. They didn’t set out to make an A24 movie, they set out to make a gory slasher horror flick and in my opinion succeeded greatly.
Adam and writer Mathieu Lamarche have a feature length version already written. The short has been making it’s way through festivals worldwide. Greed & Gore is an official selection at Blood and Snow, Necro Nancy’s Horror Film FestEVIL, Ravenwood Film Festival and many more. As the film continues to garner attention, hopefully an investor will help them turn this amazing short into a feature length film, showcasing some of the amazing talent Canada has to offer.
Just to add to how amazing these people are. After the screening, they donated any money made to the Ottawa Food Bank.
Keep an eye out for these two. Greed & Gore is only the beginning to what I can imagine will be an amazing career.
Steve Coates is from Ontario, Canada.
After dealing with severe anxiety and depression, he felt that he needed a creative outlet. This podcast was created because he has a great love for cinema of all kinds.
Steve has always had a love for movies like Jaws and Deep Blue Sea, but after discovering just how strange the world of shark movies can be, he was hooked.
Now, each week he dives into the bizarre world of sharksploitation cinema. Bite into a new episode every Friday and join him in the world of some truly fascinating shark films on Bucket of Chum: The Shark Movie Podcast
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Steve Coateshttps://tbmhorror.com/author/coates-steve/
