NYX 2022 13 Minutes of Horror (2022) - Horror Anthology Film

I was browsing Shudder for a film to watch for review this past weekend when I stumbled across NYX 2022 13 Minutes of Horror. This was a seventeen minute short film that was made up of the thirteen winning entries in the titular contest. I'm not sure if this was exclusively for the following, but the short makes a note of saying this was inclusive to BIWOC, LGBTQ+ women, disabled women and non-binary creators.

Unfortunately there wasn't really a gem among the thirteen winning entries. Films either felt like they were too short to get their message across, too confusing, or not doing enough to stick in the brain. This was disappointing as a similar contest yielded better results despite only being made up of fifteen second films. It seemed a lot of the films were written and directed by women, so there was a chance to see unique issues from their perspective. This can be seen with Beauty Booth and 2 Weeks, which both deal with people unhappy with the way they look.

There were some that had interesting ideas but not enough time to really explain themselves. Most interesting was Take A Breath that had a female scientist being switched repeatedly from drowning underwater to gasping for air in a lab. Technology is a constant for a variety of these shorts, such as with Overtime that has a dying woman signing up to continue working after she has died, Nothing Has Changed that has a man discovering that even in a VR setting his failed relationship cannot work, and Screengrab in which a witch performing spells online has something unexpected occur. Best of these, and best of the shorts was Sayonara, this took the form of a vlog from a peppy woman during world apocalypse. This was done by Elaine Chu, credit also that her end credits remain within the fictional universe she had created.
Out of the others a couple stood out for their weirdness. Transform(Her) is told entirely using stop motion action men and dolls, with some effective artificial body horror. Then there was Nine whose sole camera shot is of a clock, with the background noise of a dog barking and a woman discovering she is paralysed.

I like anthologies on the whole, there is always a gem hidden among them, but with this there really wasn't much that left much of an impression sadly. Still, at under twenty minutes this doesn't take long to get through, maybe something here would resonate with you more. NYX 2022 13 Minutes of Horror can currently be streamed on Shudder.

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