Burnout Bites Back

Read Time:9 Minute, 19 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Bad Tooth
–

Genre: Horror, Short
Year: 2026
Runtime: 14m
Director: M. Dara Alavi
Writer: M. Dara Alavi
Cast: Joshua Burge, Nicole Nygaard, Steven Adkins, Anthony Laurita
Where to Watch: shown at the 2026 LA Shorts International Film Festival and Sitges Film Festival

RAVING REVIEW: I speak from personal experience, but few things can steal your attention like a toothache. It’s the kind of pain that can start small enough to ignore for the most part, then gradually becomes the only thing you can think about. BAD TOOTH takes that experience and asks what happens when the thing you’ve been putting off refuses to stay hidden away any longer.

Written and directed by M. Dara Alavi, BAD TOOTH follows Alex, a struggling gig worker whose increasingly painful tooth becomes the beginning of something far worse. The film is only 14 minutes long, but Alavi uses that time to build a story around exhaustion, financial struggles, self-neglect, and the feeling that every problem in life waits for the worst moment to become an emergency.

That matters because BAD TOOTH could easily have been a gross-out creature-feature short. The premise practically begs for it, and there’s certainly enough here for viewers who simply want something uncomfortable. Instead, the horror works because Alex’s trouble is tied directly to everything else going wrong around him. His tooth isn’t an isolated inconvenience. It becomes another demand placed on someone who already seems to have nothing left to give.

The film grew out of Alavi’s own experience. He developed BAD TOOTH after industry layoffs left him dealing with a severe toothache he couldn’t afford to fix while not having health or dental insurance. Rather than turning that experience into a straightforward story about the healthcare system, he uses it as the foundation for something more personal. The pain becomes a representation of all the problems people convince themselves they can manage for just one more day.

That gives BAD TOOTH a layer of frustration underneath the body horror. Alex knows something is wrong, but knowing there is a problem and being able to solve it are two very different things. That distinction makes his situation easier to understand, especially as the film builds around a character already worn down by work, money, and the general instability surrounding him.

That kind of avoidance feels familiar, too. Most people have ignored some version of a problem because they didn’t have the time, money, energy, or emotional bandwidth to deal with it immediately. Sometimes it works out. Sometimes it sits there getting worse. BAD TOOTH takes that everyday experience and pushes it to a grotesque extreme where neglect becomes something that can physically fight back.

That makes the creature element considerably more interesting. BAD TOOTH isn’t subtle about the connection between Alex’s deteriorating physical condition and the rest of his life, but it doesn’t need to be. Body horror has always been especially effective when emotional or social problems become something tangible, and here the metaphor is simple enough to understand immediately without overwhelming the story.

Joshua Burge is a large reason the movie can sustain that idea. Much of BAD TOOTH depends on Alex being believable before anything truly strange begins happening, and Burge gives the character the exhausted physicality of someone who seems permanently one inconvenience away from falling apart. He doesn’t have to constantly explain Alex’s frustration because so much of it registers through his body language and reactions.

Burge also has the difficult job of keeping the movie grounded as the situation around him becomes increasingly ridiculous. At some point, the basic concept could easily become too silly to take seriously. His performance keeps Alex’s fear and discomfort recognizable even as the horror grows stranger, letting the audience follow the escalation instead of detaching.

Alavi had Burge in mind from the beginning after following his previous work with filmmaker Joel Potrykus. That familiarity with what Burge could bring to the character pays off because BAD TOOTH asks him to move through anxiety, physical pain, irritation, and increasingly heightened horror without making those transitions feel completely disconnected from one another.

The gradual movement into horror is one of the short’s better choices. Alavi wanted tension with an underlying comedic streak rather than turning the movie into an outright horror comedy, and that distinction comes through in the finished film. There’s something inherently ridiculous about imagining a toothache becoming a literal monster, but BAD TOOTH never treats Alex’s suffering as meaningless just because the situation eventually becomes absurd.

The humor instead comes from the awkwardness and frustration surrounding him. It gives the opening portion of the film some personality before the effects take over, while also helping the more extreme moments feel like they belong to the same movie. BAD TOOTH doesn’t suddenly flip a switch and become something completely different. The weirdness keeps growing until Alex has no choice but to confront it.

Then there are the practical effects, which are easily one of the biggest reasons BAD TOOTH leaves an impression.

Alavi comes from an effects background, including work connected to Legacy Effects, and the production brings together artists with substantial creature-effects experience. That experience shows in the film’s tactile horror. The effects work has a physicality that makes the more grotesque moments feel immediate, rather than overly polished or removed from the performer.

That matters a lot with this particular subject. Teeth, gums, infected tissue, and anything involving the inside of a mouth already have an uncomfortable texture. They’re parts of the body most people would rather not examine too closely. BAD TOOTH understands that instinct and uses it against the audience without simply throwing gore at the screen for a reaction.

One of the film’s standout ideas is an interior-mouth perspective created using a physical reconstruction rather than building the entire sequence digitally. It’s exactly the sort of effect that benefits from having real texture, imperfect surfaces, and physical interaction. When the horror involves flesh, teeth, and something that feels like it absolutely should not be living inside a human body, making the audience believe those objects are occupying the same physical space can make a huge difference.

There’s also something refreshing about seeing a short put this much effort into creating something physically. The effects aren’t simply there to show off what the team can build. They become part of the movie’s identity, and that hands-on approach gives BAD TOOTH a personality that could easily have disappeared if the creature work had looked too clean or artificial.

The creature itself also fits the movie thematically. This isn’t a random monster appearing because the short needs something frightening during its final stretch. The creature is the consequence. It’s the thing Alex has avoided dealing with finally becoming impossible to ignore, and that relationship between concept and design gives the effects more purpose than technical showmanship alone.

That connection between the physical horror and Alex’s larger problems is what keeps BAD TOOTH from feeling like a special-effects demo. The practical work is impressive, but the effects have something to support. Every escalation connects to Alex’s inability to keep pushing things aside, which makes the eventual confrontation feel earned rather than inevitable because the film needs a climax.

With only 14 minutes to work with, some areas inevitably feel compressed. BAD TOOTH hints at a larger world around Alex and at problems that extend well beyond the immediate events of this particular night. Some of that material is deliberately left outside the frame, which makes sense considering Alavi has been developing a feature-length version of the story alongside the short.

There are moments when I wanted a little more time with Alex before things completely unravel. His situation is clear enough to understand, but another few minutes establishing his daily routine or the pressure surrounding him could have made the later horror hit even harder. That’s less an issue with what is here than a sign that the character and concept have enough depth to support more.

Alavi doesn’t describe BAD TOOTH as a traditional proof of concept either. Instead, he considers it a self-contained portion of that larger story, essentially one particularly awful night taken from Alex’s life. That explains why the short feels like we’re meeting a character whose problems existed long before the opening moments and will continue beyond what we’re allowed to see.

That approach mostly works, though it can occasionally leave BAD TOOTH feeling like ideas just outside the short's boundaries need more breathing room. There is enough here for Alex’s immediate experience to stand on its own, but it’s also easy to understand why Alavi sees potential for something larger.

For a 14-minute horror short, however, that’s not a bad problem to have. I would much rather reach the end wanting to see what else can be done with the idea than feel like the concept has already been stretched as far as it can go.

BAD TOOTH takes an incredibly ordinary source of anxiety and pushes it toward an appropriately disgusting extreme. The practical effects give the horror personality, Burge gives it humanity, and Alavi finds enough underneath the creature-feature premise to make the pain mean something beyond the immediate shock of seeing what is happening inside Alex’s mouth.

Anyone who already hates going to the dentist probably won’t appreciate the additional nightmare fuel. For everyone else, BAD TOOTH is a nasty, clever reminder that ignoring a problem doesn’t necessarily make it disappear. Sometimes all you’re really doing is giving it more time to grow.

Please visit https://linktr.ee/overlyhonestr for more reviews.

You can follow me on Letterboxd, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. You can also find my social media accounts on most platforms by searching for 'Overly Honest Reviews'.

I’m always happy to hear from my readers; please don't hesitate to say hello or send me any questions about movies.

DISCLAIMER:
At Overly Honest Movie Reviews, we value honesty and transparency. Occasionally, we receive complimentary items for review, including DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, Vinyl Records, Books, and more. We assure you that these arrangements do not influence our reviews, as we are committed to unbiased, sincere evaluations. We aim to help you make informed entertainment choices regardless of our relationship with distributors or producers.

Amazon Affiliate Links:
This site also contains Amazon affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, we may receive a commission. This affiliate arrangement does not affect our commitment to honest reviews and helps support our site. We appreciate your trust and support as you navigate these links.