Fantasia Fest 2021: ‘Sexy Furby,’ ‘Night of the Living Dicks,’ ‘The Lovers,’ and ‘Fruit’

Everyone’s talking about the feature length excellence coming out of Fantasia Fest this year, from Agnes (review) to Brain Freeze (review) — and for good reason. But the short films deserve as much of our attention. A slate of tiny chompers, ranging from a couple minutes to 20 or more, should not be dismissed. As our festival coverage continues this week, we offer up our first edition roundup of four wildly bizarre, insane, and even quite stylish shorts you need to check out.

Sexy Furby

Surrealism comes to play in Nicole Daddona and Adam Wilder’s campy short film, Sexy Furby. When one young woman becomes suicidal after the death of her father, a sexy furby pops out of the nearby woods like some hunky and seductive woodsman. What transpires next is a dreamy, magical expedition through loneliness and greed, as our heroine soon discovers sexy furby stuffed with cash. Saddled with countless debts that she can’t possibly pay, the young woman’s loyalty is tested with her new lover. Sexy Furby is a peculiar little short, yet so totally joyous.

Fruit

I’m honestly not even sure what sort of rating this three-minute short deserves. It is one of the strangest visual experiences I’ve ever had in my life. Writer/director Ivan Li is something of a mad genius with this fruit-techno wet dream, splashing with writhing banana dicks, twitchy orgy scenes, and a brief appearance by an animated Quentin Tarantino stroking his own fruit. Beneath its chaotic layers, there’s clear conversations about self-service in the entertainment industry and its dog-eat-dog mentality. But like… banana dicks. Take from that what you will.

Night of the Living Dicks

Speaking of dicks, writer/director Ilja Rautsi’s Night of the Living Dicks makes an obvious riff off George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead but also the creature-feature craze of the ’50s. It fits snuggly up against Creature from the Black Lagoon and Plan 9 from Outer Space with its own sort of entrancing fantastical and humorous charm. Following an appearance on a primetime talk show to discuss mens’ needs to send dic picks, photographer Venla Kiiskinen accidentally swipes the wrong jacket and discovers a pair of glasses that reveal who the real dickheads are in the world. As Venla sees her surroundings anew, she sees men for the scum they really are and races against time for not only her survival but for all women. Its b-movie feel is a welcome playground to explore male aggression and entitlement towards women. It’s just outlandish enough to work.

The Lovers

Two lovers caught in a trap of co-dependency. With writer/director Avra Fox-Lerner’s The Lovers, two city-going young women find their relationship tangling around one another, their intimacy perhaps reaching unhealthy degrees. When Hazel goes out for coffee and a bagel, she runs into a flirtatious gentlemen with whom she has an obvious rapport. They go for a walk, weaving through the lush foliage of the park, before settling upon a bench for a sultry lip-lock. But things are never as they seem when the two return to Hazel’s apartment. Is it true love? Or simply a skin-flushed dalliance? Well, Fox-Lerner swiftly removes that veil to give the viewer something truly grotesque to gnaw on.

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