This year at Cucalorus

This year was my second time attending Cucalorus. I saw three narratives, a shorts block, and attended a virtual reality horror shorts block. On Thursday night I went with Devon to She’s Allergic to Cats. This was a very quirky film and the director himself was as well. He discussed the making of quite a bit during his Q & A, including how he kept actual rat poop in his cabinets while filming. Needless to say it was an odd evening, and unfortunately I didn’t particularly like the film. Friday morning Devon and I went to the Sea Monkey Animation Shorts, all of which were really good. Some of the shorts were serious while others were more light-hearted, so there was a nice balance. I’m also in an animation history class right now and noticed some different animation techniques during the block, which was pretty cool. After this block we headed over to the Leafy Sea Dragon Horror VR Shorts block. I was really excited about this as I had never seen a virtual reality film. However the set that I got did not have headphones, and unfortunately being able to hear everything going on around me took away from the experience. The two shorts were pretty cool though, as one had the viewer in a room with an infected person and people tried to break you out and escape from it. For the other film you were in a space ship that crashed and the entire mission goes wrong. If I had had headphones it definitely would have made a difference, so this was disappointing overall. Saturday evening I attended Always Shine which was about two friends traveling to a cabin for the weekend and things go dark. One friend becomes so consumed with jealousy she kills her other friend in blind rage and ends up trying to take her place only to realize in the end what she did. I did not know what to expect from this film, but it was actually really good and the buildup was incredible. Sunday afternoon Devon and I went to The Love Witch since “Modern Craft” is obviously about wiccans. One of the first lines in the film was “she’s into all that Wicca stuff” and it ended up being about a witch who goes too far with her spells and things. It is such a shame this film wasn’t playing next year because “Modern Craft” would have been a fantastic opener as a short before the feature. Last year at Cucalorus was so much fun, so this year had a lot of high expectations. Unfortunately I think a combination of me being tired and stressed took away from my overall experience, however I got to see some interesting films and just hang out with friends, which is always a fun time and escape from school related issues. Next year I am hoping to attend Cucalorus as a filmmaker with “Modern Craft”, so until then I will focus on that film and begin festival submission elsewhere until Cucalorus opens submissions for 2017.