The tradition of telling scary stories is older than you and I. Folks have been sitting around candlelight trying to freak each other out for centuries, but over time those stories, like Horror movies, have evolved. When I was young, monsters dwelled in cupboards and under beds, now they crawl out of TV’s and infiltrate your zoom calls. Canadian filmmaker Sophy Romvari aims to shed new light on the ritual of sharing unsettling tales in her 2017 short Pumpkin Movie – a hybrid documentary portraying how two old friends carry out their annual Halloween tradition.

Picture the scene: a woman alone in her darkly-lit flat, ominous music plays in the background, we know what happens next, right? Horror has already prepared us for the outcome of this scenario. Three-minutes later and as expected, knives are wielded and flesh is carved, yet there’s no Ghostface costume to be seen anywhere and no hockey-masked serial killers on the rampage. The only skin slashed is that of the traditional Halloween pumpkin. The only cutting involved are the remarks recalled by the two friends, as they swap stories of negative encounters with men.

“I wanted to bring attention to just how common and insidious these encounters are”

Created after she was asked to make a Horror movie for a Halloween omnibus, Romvari decided that although she loved the genre, she wasn’t keen to add to it and instead decided to make a film more grounded in reality. “When I stumbled on the concept of microaggressions being the topic of a horror film, I wanted to try and represent as many experiences as possible”, the filmmaker explains.

Keen to point out her film is a “hybrid” documentary, Romvari crowdsourced the stories included in her short from friends and social media. “We did our best to represent as many as possible during the run-time but of course (and sadly) there are enough of these stories to fill a feature film”, she reveals. “I wanted to bring attention to just how common and insidious these encounters are for women, even in the more mundane instances, they still get under your skin and effect your everyday life”.

With these real-life stories gathered, Romvari made her film “very quickly” by framing them within a conversation with her best, during their annual tradition of pumpkin carving. Shot over video call, the pair swap their curated collection of tales, while hacking scary faces into the flesh of their autumnal fruits (yep! a pumpkin is a fruit apparently!). The premise and execution is simple, but the film really standouts through the conversations it provokes – as I found out after discussing it with my S/W colleagues.

As a 42yr old male, living in a predominantly white area, I know my perspective needs to be broadened and I’ve also recognised that this expansion of my worldview isn’t going to come from my surroundings (if you’ve visited Dorset in the UK you’ll understand why I say that), but instead from friends, colleagues, books, art and of course film. With Pumpkin Movie this expansion of my viewpoint didn’t necessarily come from my initial viewing of the film, but the subsequent discussions with my S/W teammates, who allowed me to view the film in a new light and think about it in a different way.

Much has been written about gender roles in Horror and although Pumpkin Movie may not fit comfortably within the genre, the way it plays with the tropes means we can include it, and think about it, within that discussion. I think what you take from the film will very much depend on your perspective and how you feel about that “hybrid” documentary approach. For me, I was drawn to it because of that aforementioned modern take on the time age-old tradition of swapping scary stories. Let us know what you think in the comments below…