All month long, Hulu celebrated our season with Huluween, a specially curated and packaged horror film extravaganza that includes a short film festival. Boasting eight impressive shorts, the filmmaker with the highest levels of viewer engagement and the highest scores from a panel of expert judges – including Friday the 13th’s “Jason Voorhees” actor Kane Hodder, season four winner of RuPaul’s “Drag Race” Sharon Needles and myself– will win $10,000 towards production of their feature length film.
We’ve been reviewing the shorts over the past few weeks and now, Hulu presents the winner:
CARVED
Directed & Written by: Justin Harding
Produced by: Kris Elsley, Dale Andrews, Rob Brunner & Jason Kennedy
“A boy’s choice of an ugly pumpkin results in an unusual Jack-O-Lantern.”
My thoughts: Probably the most crazed of the shorts, Carved goes full-on weird with an effects-fueled Halloween-themed story that unapologetically goes all the way to ten. This short was nuts.
Kane Hodder: Carved has interesting characters throughout a cleverly structured story. Acting was on point and I was particularly impressed with the special effects and the choices made by the DP and director of certain important shots in the film.
Sharon Needles: This is truly a slice of pumpkin pie. This beautifully shot gem has a gnarly twisted twist. It will have you blowing your top. Gutsy!
“We are shocked, thrilled and honoured to learn about winning the Huluween Film Fest!” said Harding.
He continues: “This amazing news has brought a fresh wave of creativity and inspiration to our team. We are beyond excited to invest the winnings into a terrifying new film project that will haunt audiences and quench their thirst for a fresh voice in the horror genre.”
As a multi-award winning Filmmaker and Television Showrunner, Justin Harding has worked as a director on a wide variety of television series and film projects in various genres. His passion for creating monsters earned his horror shorts over 40 awards in film festivals around the world. Justin writes, directs, edits and creates visual effects for his own films. In 2016, Justin co-founded the “Bokeh Collective”, a Toronto based production house with a focus on producing premium entertainment with clients interested in tell cutting edge stories with cinematic production value. Justin’s previous film credits include the TIFF selected “Latched”, the SXSW selected “Kookie”, and “Point of View” from the feature anthology “A Night of Horror”. Justin’s most recent projects include the short “Carved” produced by Fox Studios for Hulu’s 2018 “Huluween Film Festival” and his debut feature“Making Monsters” which Justin directed from his own script and is set to premiere in 2019.
The Huluween Film Fest resulted in over 2 million views between the 8 shorts, on Hulu and across Hulu’s social platforms.
To view all of the Huluween short films, visit www.youtube.com/hulu.
