Yeast
2021 · 12m · UK
Directed by Elliott Gonzo
Genres: dark comedy, horror
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
A struggling baker inside a hellish bakery unexpectedly bakes himself a Frankenstein's monster made of dough and yeast, which slowly takes over his life. An absurd and grotesque tale of creation, obsession, and a creature with an appetite of its own.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A baker accidentally creates his own bread-based Frankenstein—it's exactly the kind of "wait, WHAT?" premise that makes consensus taste look cowardly. Gonzo commits fully to the absurd grotesque without winking at the audience, which is rarer than it should be.
The film's visual language sits deliberately between Cronenberg's body horror and the formalist traditions of stop-motion craft, a lineage it understands and respects even as it contaminates the boundaries. The editing rhythm mirrors fermentation itself—a measured buildup toward inevitable, irreversible transformation.
The choice to make the creature literally alive dough—fermenting, evolving, with its own metabolic logic—transforms what could be a one-note joke into something genuinely unsettling and tender. It's a single formal decision that justifies the entire premise and makes the budget irrelevant.
Festivals
- Popcorn Frights Film Festival 2022