2023 FANGORIA Chainsaw Awards Shorts Week Presents: "Blink"

Sophie Thatcher vs... well, come see for yourself.

By Angel Melanson · @HorrorGirlProbs · February 10, 2023, 2:24 PM EST
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We are in full-blown Chainsaw Awards mode over here and all this week we have been shining the spotlight on the nominees in our new Best Short category! Some of the short films nominated have been on the festival circuit and previously unavailable online. That makes voting a little tricky, so we're bringing them to you right here, as we celebrate shorts week. This is the fifth installment so sit back and enjoy, there's a link at the bottom to revisit all of the shorts featured this week. And remember to get those votes in!

You'll likely recognize a familiar face in this one, Sophie Thatcher (Yellowjackets, The Boogeyman) stars in this hospital horror from filmmakers Anna Halberg and Spenser Cohen. This is the first short film from Sony's Scream Gems Horror Lab and they're coming in hot right out the gate! You can check out our full interview with Anna and Spenser right here, in the meantime we'll turn it over to them.

We (Anna and Spenser) each had independent episodes of sleep paralysis and it was absolutely horrifying. While that isn’t exactly what "Blink" is about, we thought it would be a great jumping off point for a horror film – being in the comfort of your bedroom and not being able to scream or defend yourself if there was an intruder. Around the same time, Sony’s genre label Screen Gems created an incubator program with producer, Scott Glassgold, called the Scream Gems Horror Lab, which collaborates with rising filmmakers to produce horror shorts with the hopes of developing them into full-fledged feature films. We pitched the idea to the lab and were lucky enough to be chosen as their first project.

We are honored to be nominated for this award. We had an incredible time making this short film and have been overwhelmed by the amount of support the movie has received. We love the horror genre and are especially grateful for the opportunity to have made "Blink" as it led to our feature directorial debut with Sony / Screen Gems — a horror movie called Horrorscope, which we are currently in post on.


And in case you missed it, you can get caught up all on this week's featured nominees right here. Stay tuned for more and vote for the 2023 FANGORIA Chainsaw Awards!