Horror Film Roulette is a fun film festival for local Metro Detroit filmmakers to flex their creative muscle and make some short films. The gist is that each team of filmmakers have two weeks to create a short film based on a horror film genre picked randomly by spinning the Wheel of Horror. The genres they can get are: slasher, thriller, sci-fi, monster, supernatural and of course, zombies. After the two weeks is up, the films are presented in a showcase and are judged. There is an overall judge panel but there is also an award for Audience Favorite as well. This annual event is run by Terri Rozwadowski and Erik Steel.
This year the showcase was held at the AMC Forum 30 which is a first time the event has been shown in an actual movie theater. There were eighteen films shown with a fifteen minute intermission. Most of the shorts clocked in at around five minutes long so it goes by fairly quickly. The tone of the various shorts ranged from creepy to humorous to abstract art house. One short was made by a team from Mexico City and there was even an animated entry, so there was something for everyone. I loved the atmosphere in the theater because it was full of the cast and crew from all the movies and everyone was having a good time.
The winners of this year's Horror Film Roulette were:
1st Place: Slasher Summit
2nd Place: Zombie Intelligence
3rd Place: Palteygeist