Hairsucker
2022 · 4m · Australia
Directed by Michael Jones, Paddy Jessop
Genres: horror
A young woman performs her nightly hair-care ritual before bed, unaware that a grotesque creature emerges in the dark to feed on her while she sleeps. A wordless, practical-effects-driven creature short played for maximum skin-crawl.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Hairsucker commits fully to a premise that shouldn't work—a creature that eats hair while you sleep is aggressively stupid until the practical effects make it genuinely unsettling, which is exactly the kind of dumb-to-transcendent flip that justifies its own existence.
The film operates in the lineage of tactile body horror—Cronenberg's DNA runs through every gloppy frame—but Jones and Jessop lean so hard on the practical effects that they risk overwhelming the formal restraint that would elevate this into something truly lasting.
The entire film hinges on De Ross's commitment to the creature's grotesque physicality and the sound design of the feeding itself; that tactile, almost sexual revulsion is what transforms a disposable premise into something that genuinely adheres to skin.
Reviews
It Eats You While You Sleep
A well-made short film with an interesting monster that thoroughly grossed me out.
A straight-to-the-point short film guaranteed to make viewers' skin crawl.
Festivals
- Fantasia International Film Festival 2022
- Fantastic Fest 2022
- Screamfest Horror Film Festival 2022
- Telluride Horror Show 2022
- SLASH Film Festival 2022
- Landshut Short Film Festival 2022