Waynesville‘s Hometown News Site

HAND keeps a very focused vision and trusts that the weight of its subject will carry the film without added emphasis. It doesn’t build toward some grand reveal. It stays small on purpose, focusing on a single perspective and letting that do the work. Short films' success comes from the impact that they can create, and even more so, the impact that they can leave with you. HAND does that in strides, taking an intimate story that understands the impact it's having on audiences.

BASIC PSYCH builds itself up around a premise that doesn’t need all that much setup to land. A psychiatrist is forced to treat a patient who may pose a real threat, all while being bound by confidentiality. That creates a situation where every decision can lead to something more, leaving risk at every turn. The film understands that from the start and doesn’t waste time getting into it.

WATCH ME SLEEP has a core reason for existing, which is a premise that does most of the heavy lifting on its own. A man installs a camera inside his mother’s coffin after she’s buried so he can keep watching her. That idea doesn’t need much embellishment. It’s invasive in a way that immediately puts the viewer on edge, and it carries enough emotional and psychological weight to sustain a full film if handled with precision. The issue isn’t the concept. It’s the follow-through.

MISTURA starts from a place that doesn’t ask for an easy connection. Norma Piet is introduced with a level of detachment that feels intentional. She’s shaped by privilege and comfortable in a world that’s never forced her to look beyond it. When that world collapses, the film doesn’t rush to make her likable. It lets her sit in the fallout, and it doesn’t soften that impact to make that transition easier to accept.

PRIMATE knows exactly what it wants to be, and that confidence goes a long way in making everything here work. This isn’t elevated horror pretending to have grander ambitions than it can support. It’s a killer-animal thriller built around a rabid chimpanzee tearing through a tropical getaway, and the film’s biggest strength is that it doesn’t waste time apologizing for how ridiculous that sounds. It commits to the setup, throws its cast into increasingly difficult situations they aren’t prepared for, and delivers the kind of creature-feature energy that makes up for a lot of the story’s thinner material.

SONG SILENCED: COMING OUT IN CHRISTIAN MUSIC works because it refuses to treat faith and identity like opposing forces that can only exist in conflict. That would’ve been the easier documentary to make, the one built around an argument and a more obvious emotional shape. Instead, this film sits in a space where belief still matters, music still matters, and the people at the center aren’t trying to discard one part of themselves to preserve another. They’re trying to survive the damage caused by institutions that insisted they never should’ve had to exist as whole people in the first place.

AMERICAN SOLITAIRE positions itself as an intimate, character-driven exploration of what happens after the fog of war fades, and what’s left behind refuses to come to terms. Centered on a returning soldier trying to find his way back in civilian life, the film leans into the emotional and psychological aftermath of combat rather than the in-the-moment terror of it. This is a story that prioritizes internal conflict, asking what it means to rebuild a sense of self in a world that feels both familiar and like something you don’t recognize.

MĀRAMA is a gothic horror film that distinguishes itself not so much by its structure as by its clarity of purpose. It takes a framework well known in the genre, an outsider arriving at an isolated estate with secrets buried in its walls. It reshapes it through a different perspective that prioritizes identity, inheritance, and cultural violation. The result is a film that is less concerned with surprise and more focused on controlled, deliberate storytelling.

ROMANCING IN THIN AIR is a surprisingly sincere and emotionally layered romantic drama from director Johnnie To, a filmmaker widely known for crime thrillers rather than introspective love stories. What initially presents itself as a story revolving around a broken man meeting a grieving woman in an isolated setting that gradually shifts into something more reflective, even meta in some ways, about grief, healing, and the illusions we build around love.

AMRUM is a quiet, observational coming-of-age story that focuses not on the spectacle of war but on the ideological and emotional fallout experienced far from the front lines. Set in the final days of World War II on a remote German island, the film follows a young boy, Nanning (Jasper Billerbeck), as he navigates a world shifting beneath his feet, without understanding the depths of the reason why.

There’s never, not even for a second, any confusion about what kind of movie this is, and that ends up being both its biggest strength and its biggest limitation. THE STÖNED AGE doesn’t pretend to be anything beyond a chaotic, often crude snapshot of a very specific kind of coming-of-age teenage experience, and whether that hits home with you or completely falls apart depends almost entirely on how much patience you have for its characters and tone. I think the most important thing here is whether this is a type of film made for you. If you’re not sure, then it’s probably not.

SOLDIER wastes no time telling you what kind of story it is, then proves it has more going on beneath that surface than it initially lets on. This isn’t a film interested in complexity for the sake of sounding important. It’s built on a premise, executed with discipline, and anchored entirely by a performance that understands restraint better than most action films ever attempt.

A film student picks up a discarded USB drive and finds herself chasing the legacy of a forgotten Italian horror director, but CITY WIDE FEVER isn’t really about solving that mystery. It’s about what happens when someone starts treating movies like a map of reality and keeps following them long after they stop making sense. From the start, the film positions obsession as the driving force, not logic, and everything that follows builds off that choice.

A family moves to Vancouver Island hoping for a reset, but BLUE HERON makes it clear pretty quickly that geography doesn’t fix what’s already fractured. Writer/director Sophy Romvari builds this story through the perspective of a child who doesn’t grasp how to explain what’s going wrong around her, which forces the film to communicate through behavior, silence, and the shifts in how people exist in the same space. It’s not interested in spelling things out, and that decision shapes everything that follows.

OVER THE GARDEN WALL never tries to rely on scale, spectacle, or complexity to leave an impact. It succeeds because it understands exactly how much story it needs to tell, and more importantly, how to tell it without wasting a moment. Across its ten short episodes, it builds something that feels simple, only to reveal a level of emotional and thematic depth that most full-length series never reach.

INNERSPACE is built on a concept so inherently ridiculous that it almost dares itself to fail, and yet, against all odds, it manages to turn that into something consistently entertaining and overcome itself over and over. This is the kind of high-concept storytelling that feels like it could only come out of a very specific era, when studios were willing to take risks on strange ideas, lean into them, and trust that the combination of talent and creativity would carry them across the finish line.

GRACE, both the film and the character, never ask for sympathy, and that’s why it's as strong as it is. This is a story rooted in something more uncomfortable than a surface-level struggle; it’s about what happens when the people closest to you believe they know what’s best, even when it comes at the cost of your autonomy. From the very beginning, the film positions its lead not as someone who needs protection, but as someone who is constantly denied the right to define her own life.

A blind woman regains her sight, only to realize that what she’s seeing doesn’t belong to the living. THE EYE has a premise that immediately hooks you, not because it’s complicated, but because it’s effective and focused. The idea alone carries a lot of weight, and for a good portion of the film, that’s enough to keep everything locked in.

DIE MY LOVE is never subtle about what it's trying to do, and yet it constantly feels like it’s holding something back. It opens with a level of intensity that suggests you’re about to watch a full descent into chaos, a film that’s willing to strip everything down to a raw experience and leave nothing untouched. And for stretches, it absolutely delivers on that promise. But just as often, it pulls away at the exact moment you expect it to go further, creating a strange push-and-pull that defines the entire film.

The WANDERING GINZA BUTTERFLY COLLECTION isn’t a case of rediscovering a hidden masterpiece; it’s something far more specific than that. This is a snapshot of early 70s Japanese crime cinema, anchored by a rising icon, packaged to highlight both its strengths and restraints. As individual films, they’re kind of all over the place. As a set, they become something more cohesive and ultimately more rewarding.

SATURNALIA doesn’t shy away from what it wants to be. From the very beginning, it's clear this is a film built on admiration, drawing directly from the DNA of 1970s Italian giallo horror but made in Virginia! That kind of approach can be risky. Lean too far into homage and the film loses its own identity. Hold back too much, and it feels like a missed opportunity. What makes SATURNALIA work as often as it does is how confidently it commits to that inspiration, even when it doesn’t escape its pull.

REVELATIONS OF DIVINE LOVE makes its intentions clear from the get-go, not by scale or spectacle, but by how deliberately constructed everything feels. It doesn’t care as much as you’d expect in trying to look like a traditional period piece, nor does it try to disguise its limitations. Instead, it builds its world piece by piece, embracing its handmade quality as part of the storytelling itself. This is a film driven by intent and persistence, and that level of commitment is present in every frame. Ironically, the craft here becomes secondary to the story itself. It’s there, but you eventually just accept it and let the film's story wrap you up.

TRUE COLORS doesn’t waste any time showing you who these characters are, and that vision ends up being both its biggest strength. From the moment Peter Burton and Tim Gerrity cross paths, you can feel the imbalance. One is driven by ambition that borders on desperation, the other by a belief in doing things the right way. That contrast is what keeps the film going, and it never really strays from that lane.

VAMPIRE CIRCUS is in no way, shape, or form a Hammer film built around restraint. It leans into a harsher world almost immediately, trading the polished gothic tone the studio was known for for something more chaotic, more aggressive, and, at times, genuinely uncomfortable. That shift alone makes it stand out, even when the film doesn’t hold together. From the opening scene, this film screams that it’s not afraid to make you feel on edge!

Obsession has always been a reliable core idea for thrillers, but THE FAN leans into it with a kind of intensity that feels very specific to the mid-90s; it’s loud, stylized, and grounded enough to keep it from drifting into absurdity. It’s a film that doesn’t always balance its tone, but when it locks into what it's examining, it becomes far more compelling than its reputation suggests.