US festival slot for horror short

HORROR doesn’t have to frighten with buckets of blood and gore – sometimes just the sound of pliers on teeth is enough to send a shiver down your spine.

Wellington film-maker Mathew Watkins hopes the off-screen terror and on-screen tension in Divide, an eight-minute short film he wrote and directed, will be enough to wow the judges at the Atlanta Horror Film Festival today.

Divide is the only New Zealand movie included, with seven short frights from around the world to screen in the horror/foreign film section of the US festival.

It follows a terrified young woman who stays on the phone with her father as her abusive boyfriend seemingly holds her hostage.

Much of the violence is unseen, obscured, implied or heard in the phone call, which is just the way Watkins wanted it.

‘‘Your teeth clench, that’s worse than seeing it.

‘‘It all comes back to that feeling of going to the dentist.’’

Sound and narrative vie for the viewers’ attention in an unsettling cinematic clash that is scripted like a radio play.

‘‘The sound part of the script took a while,’’ he says.

‘‘I spent my holidays creating the sound effects in all the usual classic ways, stabbing cabbages and experimenting to get what I wanted.’’

Originally from Napier, Watkins bookends the film with evocative shots of the Heretaunga Plains and Tutaekuri River.

Although a big fan of local hero Sir Peter Jackson’s early slapstick splatterfest Braindead, the 21-yearold says his film was inspired by British crime black comedy Shallow Grave, co-starring Kiwi actress Kerry Fox, and the claustrophobic Korean revenge thriller Old Boy, both of which feature scenes of memorable dental savagery.

Watkins trained at Hawke’s Bay’s Eastern Institute of Technology and has been financially backed by tutors, friends, family and an anonymous donor who chipped in $3000 to get him to the festival.

The first-time international traveller found out he had made the cut only two weeks ago, and getting to the US at such short notice has been quite a scramble.

Festival communications director Sandy Astudillo says the festival is not the typical showcase of blood and guts and was created as a platform for innovative indie film-makers.

‘‘Although we love blood and guts too, we present cutting-edge films that represent the new genre of horror.’’