Guest
This clever and playful take on the high school revenge trope is qualified for this year’s Academy Awards after receiving numerous prizes including a Jury award at last year’s Sundance and the Directing prize at Fantastic Fest. The second short film by British director and editor Dylan Holmes Williams, The Devil’s Harmony announces a new talent in genre cinema. Through eerie and composed visuals, the short follows a bullied teen and a capella singer as she leads her troupe on a melodic rampage through suburbia. Williams set out to make a riff on the classic 80s/90s American high school films, co-writing the script with England’s NFTS alumni Jess O’Kane. He wanted to play with the genre while giving it something a bit blacker and bleaker. Inspired by Gus Van Sant’s Elephant and Rian Johnson’s Brick, Williams looked for places that could fit a “fluorescent-lit, otherworldly aesthetic”, similar to these films.
