The Sermon (11:33)
Dean Puckett (2); Directors Notes; Film Shortage; IMDb; Short of the Week; Vimeo; YouTube

This 2018 short film was presented by Alter in 2019, but I first saw it elsewhere.

First of all, no one who has emetophobia should watch this film.

The film is done in the style of 1960s/70s folk horror. (Yeah, "folk horror" is a genre which I don't remember whether or not I'd heard of before watching this, but when I read those words I immediately knew what it meant... mostly about more modern horror films, even if I hadn't actually seen them.) Anyway, it's set in a small English town in the country, though I'm not sure of the era. (It seems like it could be set in the future, though it feels like the past.) It begins with a young woman preparing wine for the titular sermon, which is given by her father, the local preacher. In the sermon, he rails against homosexuality. There's a scene where his daughter makes love to an older woman, and there's a scene where that woman is dragged out by an angry mob to be stoned or... something. It actually looked to me like they were throwing fruit or something at her. And the preacher's daughter is forced to also pelt her with whatever it is. (It's kind of ironic that in the sermon, the preacher quoted a Bible verse that said both men- it doesn't say anything about women- in such a relationship should be put to death, but he doesn't want that done to his daughter. Although it's possible he wasn't aware it was her with the older woman. I think the act was witnessed by two young men, and maybe they didn't tell the preacher who they'd seen the older woman with. I dunno.) Anyway... at the end of the sermon, the young woman gives each member of the congregation in turn the decanter of wine she'd prepared in the opening scene, before finally serving her father. You might say what happens next is the "horror" part of the film, but as far as I'm concerned, it was actually the thing that put an end to the horror.

Well... I didn't rate the short very highly, but this is one of those things where I feel bad about my enjoyment of something being less than my appreciation for its quality. I think (and I say this without having actually seen any of the older films to which it pays homage) that it does an excellent job of representing the genre. And I believe the director is planning on making a feature length version of the story, which I think I'd like better, just because there'd be more of a chance to get to know and care about some of the characters (and more juicily loathe some of the others). So, we'll see.