Sushi Noh
2022 · 18m · Australia
Directed by Jayden Rathsam Hua
Genres: dark comedy, horror, thriller
Tones: absurdist, dark, surreal
Nine-year-old Ellie is left in the care of her lonely uncle, where she encounters a bizarre sushi-vomiting kitchen appliance that triggers an escalating avalanche of surreal body-horror nightmares bleeding into reality.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A vomiting sushi machine triggering body horror for a nine-year-old — Hausu energy with a side of Gremlins. Eighteen minutes is a long bet on a single gross gag but I want to see if it holds.
A vomiting sushi machine as the engine of childhood body horror puts Rathsam Hua in conversation with Nobuhiko Obayashi's Hausu, which is heady company. Age-gated, absurdist, and exactly the kind of gleeful weirdness that justifies the eighteen-minute commitment.
Age-restricted on YouTube and the page is thin, but the elevator pitch — a sushi-vomiting kitchen appliance as the engine of childhood body horror — is the kind of mundane-object-becomes-monstrous logic that works when the surrealism is committed. 18 minutes is a long runtime to sustain that on premise alone.
Reviews
Sushi Noh is an exploration of the weird, absurd, and grotesque — qualities that ignited my subconscious then and continue to do so today.
AFTRS short Sushi Noh named Vimeo Staff Pick and launches on Short of the Week — the film blends body horror, slashers, and psychological thrillers with absurdist humor rooted in childhood dread.
Festivals
- Encounters Film Festival 2022
- Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2022, Audience Choice; Most Bonkers Award
- Another Hole in the Head Film Festival 2022, Best Student Short
- Flickerfest International Short Film Festival 2023, Best Screenplay for an Australian Short
- Melbourne International Film Festival 2022
- Sydney Film Festival 2022
- Palm Springs ShortFest 2022
- Seattle International Film Festival 2022