[SXSW 2021 Short Films Review] Horror Shorts 'The Thing That Ate the Birds' 'A Tale Best Forgotten' and 'Don't Peek' Bring Surprises

As well as the trio of short films about unconventional love, I also checked out three more intriguing genre-specific short films debuting at SXSW 2021.

The Thing That Ate the Birds

Revenge is on the minds of the mysterious creatures at the center of Dan Gitsham and Sophie Mair’s The Thing That Ate the Birds. It opens ominously enough on a decapitated bird before progressing into a story of a fraught relationship between a husband and his wife, Abel (Eoin Slattery) and Grace (Rebecca Palmer). Something tangible is killing the birds while something less physical is driving a wedge between the two. 

“He’ll never change. It is what it is,” Grace tells someone on the phone who seems to want her to leave. Meanwhile, Abel hunts whatever is killing the local birdlife and the two feel inextricably connected. During an early sequence, Grace steps on a broken piece of glass and as she starts pulling out the shard, the shot transitions to Abel, rubbing the blood of a mutilated bird between his fingers. Between this and Grace’s phone call, The Thing That Ate the Birds conveys its message of fatalism and tragedy that slowly comes to fruition once Abel discovers what exactly has been decapitating the birds. 

It’s a remarkably restrained story that offers vague clues and context but lets the viewer sit in the mood and crushing atmosphere it creates. The Thing That Ate the Birds might not be flashy and it didn’t immediately wow in ways another of the short films did. But it’s a subtle tragedy that I kept thinking about after the festival was over. 

A Tale Best Forgotten

This one is a bit more artsy and evocative than the other, more narrative-focused short films. A Tale Best Forgotten takes the titular poem by Scottish poet Helen Adam and applies camera trickery and mirror images to evoke a particular atmosphere. It brings to mind the visual styling of Oz Perkins, particularly as a stylistic homage to I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. 

In one particular shot, the camera is upside down, moving towards the ground until it rights itself as a man chops wood. But the camera keeps going, taking in the window of the house and towards the roof, where a girl looks out from the window, before continuing its journey back to the ground. More experimental than narrative-driven, it has an incredibly visual style and the way the images inverted themselves and were seemingly reflected by a river that felt endless in its mirror surface was dizzying. An intriguing mood piece.

Don’t Peek

Easily the buzziest short film of the festival, Julian Terry’s Don’t Peek mixes technology with old school haunts in a fantastic and relatable way. Animal Crossing has been hugely popular ever since the game launched at the beginning of the global pandemic, to the point that even non-gamers know the game or have played it. Don’t Peek capitalizes on this, as a young woman (Katie Cetta) plays the game on her bed, late at night. It’s a scene that millions of people have experienced over the last year...except that this woman notices that when she opens a drawer in the game, the drawer in her bedroom opens, as well. 

At first, she reacts with joy, turning off the light in the game and watching its resulting action in the real world. But then there’s a shadow standing in the doorway of the game. A long, dark, shadowy thing that laughs in a distorted 8-bit way...and suddenly the floor in her room creaks. 

Don’t Peek is the most polished and easily digestible of the short films I saw at SXSW and it doesn’t surprise me that it’s already been acquired by Timur Bekmambetov to be adapted into a full-length feature. It has the same buzzy simplicity that turned Lights Out into a box office smash. The good news is that you can also watch this one right now.