Sundance Midnight Short Film Program Brings Humor to Horror

Who doesn’t love a little dark humor from time to time? In my opinion, there is no better way to send off Sundance from our beloved home in Utah than with the Midnight Short Film Program. It’s a reminder of why Sundance is so important in the first place: showing you weird shit that makes you laugh, cry, scream and reflect on your life and what it all means. With a stacked six-short lineup, the Midnight Short Film Program is not one to miss this final year!

The Worm
Director: Tom Noakes
STUDIO GOONO

Imagine, if you will, a world where a worm is whispering to you from the back garden. The slimy, wiggly bugger won’t leave you alone, taking up space in your head and filling it with one simple command: Kill yourself. That’s exactly what’s happening to our young protagonist Kieren (Joe Bird, Talk to Me) in The Worm. His family, deeply troubled by what they think is Kieren’s mental break from reality, holds an intervention voicing their concerns about his obsession with finding the little creepy crawly. The Worm is a fun 13-minute emotional rollercoaster as the film weaves humor and horror while painting a metaphor for mental health and how it affects your every waking thought (whether you want it to or not). Whatever comes next from director/writer duo Tom Noakes and Will Goodfellow, I hope it’s feature-length, as I never wanted The Worm to end.

Taga
Director: Jill Marie Sachs
CAPE

Taga might just be the scariest yet most heartfelt short in the lineup for this year’s Midnight Short Film Program. It’s a tale about a young woman named Vivi who visits the Philippines with a preppy and misguided eco-coalition group to reconnect with her roots. While there, the group encounters locals burning a small patch of forest, but little do they know that this is not about profit but about protection. Protection from who, you might ask? Nangangatok, one of the scariest mimic-like creatures in Filipino folklore. Taga is not only terrifying but a heartfelt exploration of connecting to your heritage as a means of healing your soul. Watching this with my best friend who actually is from the Philippines, and who was so excited to see her own culture represented on screen, Taga rekindled my love for film and connection, all the while scaring the shit out of me!

Homemade Gatorade
Director: Carter Amelia Davis

Another absolute knockout of a short comes in the form of Homemade Gatorade, a grotesquely funny tale about a young woman attempting to travel to meet up with an anonymous buyer who wants her entire batch of “creamy and warm from the garage” homemade gatorade. A feast for not only the mind, but the eyes. Davis’ experimental, mixed-media animation style is so grossly intriguing, you can’t look away during the short’s 9-minute runtime. With a  David Lynch style of storytelling, you’ll never want Homemade Gatorade to end!

Prime
Director: Meagan Coyle
Bad Charm

Prime is a fun, 16-minute storyline that has everything you could ever want from a horror film: cults and cannibals! When young trauma victim Claire joins what appears to be a hippie commune, she realizes there’s more going on here than simply joking about the group being a cult. Writer-director Meagan Coyle seemed nonchalant during the program’s Q&A after the screening, but she’s telling a lot more than just a cannibal cult story. Prime is an exploration of trauma and how when we think we’re running from things, we always end up running towards what feels familiar.

UM
Director: Nieto
Autour de Minuit Productions

“Ummm…” is exactly what comes to mind when watching the acid-trip animation that is Um. Allegedly, the 8-minute short is about bird gods coming down to restore balance to an earth tethering on collapse — though I didn’t catch any of that until I read the synopsis in the festival’s program. Um is not a horrible short; it’s a feast for the eyes and a compelling watch. However, it feels like just a snippet of a larger story I’m pissed that I’m missing out on. Nieto’s got the makings of a compelling voice in animation, but they just need to refrain from biting off more than they can chew for us baby birds. 

¡PIKA!
Director: Alex Fischman Cárdenas
See-Through Films

There’s nothing more relatable than an itch you just can’t scratch enough. Though that’s all that ¡PIKA! has going for it. It’s a story about a man waking up with an overbearing itch, who has run out of the cream he uses to soothe it. He goes on an errand for his local farmacia owner, only for the man to sell it to someone else behind his back. Utterly defeated, our protagonist calls his mother to come to his rescue. I’m not sure what else I can tell you without spoiling the film’s main gimmick. I will say, ¡PIKA! seemed like a promising exploration of addiction and the grief that comes with it, up until its cheap and shocking-for-the-sake-of-being-shocking-because-nothing-else-really-happens-in-the-film ending. The film’s end is its undoing, leading it to be the weakest of the Midnight Short Film Program.

Read more of SLUG’s coverage of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.