12 Great Horror Movie Shorts You Need To See

With the amount of horror shorts we have access to through YouTube and Vimeo, it's difficult to know which are worth watching. After all, an increasing percentage of people have the capability to shoot, edit, and virtually distribute films, which is great in that more talented people have the chance to make and exhibit their art, but also challenging for viewers who have to sift through an ever expanding collection of videos to arrive at something exceptional.

However, some of the most exciting, inventive horror films are shorts and it's worth taking them time to seek them out... or to look at a list like this and have them presented to you. In this list, you'll find early works by some of the current premiere horror film directors, shorts by unknowns who deserve our recognition, and films by some directors whose names we might be hearing more of in the near future.

Because these films are short and independently produced, their filmmakers get to play with techniques and ideas that are outside the mainstream, producing amazing feats of cinema through their experimentation. Others still take horror tropes and distill them down to their essentials, delivering stripped-back, terrifying experiences. All find their own way to play with this form and deliver exciting results.

From disturbing Lychian nightmares to grotesque comedies to pure, undiluted scares, this list has a bit of everything for horror fans.

Childer is a brilliant short by director Aislinn Clarke who is better known for directing the equally brilliant found-footage feature The Devil’s Doorway.

Childer's explicit horrors are few and far between. What this film does in those in-between parts is instill an unease. At its core is a mother-son dynamic, but that dynamic always feels a bit off. The environment surrounding them is fairly mundane, but there is so much about it that doesn’t feel right. The mother herself is in turns normal and indecipherable. It’s a queasy kind of horror that gets deeper and deeper - the world becoming more and more perverse, the mother and son finding themselves further and further in the midst of a vague, but nonetheless encroaching danger.

It’s a brilliant film that takes its time to immerse us in its setting and, in doing so, keeps us from ever feeling comfortable.