The air is crisp, the leaves are crunchy—that can mean only one thing: spooky season is upon us! Get in the spirit with six ghostly, goofy, and grim films made by alumni of Pratt’s Film/Video and Digital Arts Departments. Whether you prefer horror, thrillers, or something more surreal, we have you covered through October 31 and beyond.
1. Buzzkill by Peter Ahern
“Horror films often push the use of inventive visuals and creative storytelling,” said Peter Ahern, BFA Film ’09. “To me, horror and animation are a perfect match.” Ahern combines the genre and medium in his 2022 animated horror film Buzzkill, in which a blind date takes a strange—and terrible—turn.
At Pratt, Ahern was empowered to manage every step of short film production. “While it sometimes felt overwhelming to wear so many hats, the experience gave me a chance to explore the entire process and become a well-rounded artist,” he said. “After graduating, I carried these skill sets forward into my career, both as a commercial animator and an independent filmmaker.”
Buzzkill was named Best Animated Short at Screamfest, Flickers’ Rhode Island International Film Festival, and GenreBlast, among others. It has also been Academy Award Qualified and named a Vimeo Staff Pick. For a look at Ahern’s earlier work, check out his disturbing, award-winning film Down To The Bone, made during his time at Pratt.
2. Ask Again Later by Chloe Evangelista
If traditional horror isn’t your thing, try the animated film Ask Again Later by Chloe Evangelista, BFA Digital Arts ’22, for a surreal, existential fright. The thesis film uses a dizzying array of rotoscoped live action footage to evoke the confusion of a dreamscape (nightmare-scape?) that Evangelista experienced after being hospitalized with a pulmonary embolism.
“I learned after my recovery just how close of a call it truly was,” she said. “My lungs were peppered with blood clots, and my blood oxygen levels were so low that the ER doctors were practically waiting for my organs to start failing. I came within an inch of being dead at 19.” Her film is “a direct result of a delusion that I struggled with afterwards: Had I in fact actually died? Was all that I was witnessing and experiencing fake?”
Ask Again Later won Best Experimental Film at Pratt’s 2022 Best in Show ceremony and was a finalist in the 2022 Student Academy Awards under the category Alternative/Experimental. Her work has also been awarded first place in the Asbury Park Art Council’s APin3 film challenge.
3. The Third Ear by Nathan Ginter
Nathan Ginter, BFA Film ’23, brings body horror to the classroom in his unsettling film. “The Third Ear was my college thesis film at Pratt Institute, so I wanted to do something that would utilize and make the most of the spaces and resources around me,” he told Directors Notes. “In our first year, we had figure drawing classes, and I was interested in the various reasons one might be drawn to modeling. The idea of putting a character who you might not expect in that position, mixed with my love of body horror, clicked as a way to tangibly explore the push and pull between the desire of wanting to be seen and the fear of what comes with that.”
Ginter’s work has won Best Short Film at the BFI Future Film Festival and Brooklyn Horror Film Festival, and has screened at Fantastic Fest, Beyond Fest, New Hampshire Film Festival, Rhode Island Film Festival, Bend Film Festival, and more. His films have also been featured on Vimeo Staff Picks, Directors Notes, Film Shortage, and NoBudge.
4. Tweens Bite by Grace Luna
We’re all familiar with the brooding teenage drama of the Twilight series, but what happens when pre-teens are bit by a vampiric bug? As if navigating tweendom wasn’t awkward enough, Grace Luna, BFA Film ’23, amps up the stakes by adding a spooky twist to a story that’s ultimately more about friendship than it is about fright. “Young girls are weird, hilarious, and strong, and I always felt that there was a major lack of representation of this fact in the media,” said Luna. “Through all of the jokes and the absurd costumes, at its heart the film is about an unbreakable friendship. The girls are dorky and quirky, they really only have each other, and they hold on to that bond dearly.”
Tweens Bite was the official selection of and winner of the Audience Choice Award at the Hudson Valley Film Festival, official selections of the Shock-A-Go-Go Film Festival and Film Night in Brooklyn, and was selected by Pratt to premiere at BAM Cinema. After graduating, Luna was hired as a writer’s room story editor on a dramedy film.
5. That Little Bodega Next to Lorenzo’s by Jack Nicoletti
An official selection of the Brooklyn SciFi Film Festival (BSFFF) 2024, That Little Bodega Next to Lorenzo’s by Jack Nicoletti, BFA Film ’24, takes place in an otherworldly convenience store. Shot on and around Pratt’s campus, Nicoletti drew from familiar surroundings to create something eerie and sinister. As a kid, he was drawn to films like Ghostbusters and Poltergeist. “When you sit down and watch those movies, you can feel that everybody on set was having a blast making them,” Nicoletti said. Through his time at Pratt, he realized that fun, high-concept storytelling was “the best way that I could express my own deeper emotions.”
You can attend the film’s live premiere at the Best in Brooklyn screening block of the BSFFF on October 16, or stream it here now.
6. Tales from the End by Mark Reyes
Mark Reyes, BFA Film ’20, takes an extraterrestrial approach to the genre in Tales from the End, which has been screened at the Buried Alive Film Festival, Amazing Fantasy Film Fest, and The Festival of the Unseen. The apocalyptic story follows the two surviving people on Earth as they explore the remains of their hometown. Combining elements of science fiction, levity, and camp, he describes Tales from the End as “an optimistic look at a worst-case scenario.”
“I like to think of my work as a positive message beamed into space, much like NASA’s Voyager Golden Record, waiting for someone to stumble upon it and unlock a small piece of wisdom from a random human far away,” he said.
“My time at Pratt Institute truly opened my eyes to the vast possibilities filmmaking offers. Being surrounded by some of the best young artists from all over the world expanded my worldview, both personally and artistically.” To see more of Reyes’s unique mixed-media style, check out his award-winning animated short The House of Weird, which was shown at Fantasia International Film Festival.
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