Back for its third season, 20th Digital Studio’s Bite Size Halloween is here to bring you all sorts of spooky shorts for the Halloween season. Available since October 1st on Hulu (only in the US), if you’re hungry for quick fun films to watch over the weekend, before you slip into your costume and go out trick or treating, then search no further as all twenty shorts will deliver exactly what you’re looking for! 

If, like me, you are not in the US (and don’t pay for a VPN), you can still get a taste of this season with two films – Nian by Michelle Krusiec and Snatched by Michael Schwartz – available (for free) on YouTube.

Nian by MICHELLE KRUSIEC

A teenage girl is helped by a mythical creature to face her racist bully. Mixing horror and comedy with the presence of the kick-ass grandma, this is the perfect bite size story if you are looking for a quick and effective spooky short!

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Snatched by MICHAEL SCHWARTZ

Featuring She-Hulk’s (and for the true OGs, Orphan Black’s) Tatiana Maslany and real life partner Brendan Hines (Locke & Key), Snatched blends an alien possession storyline with coming out tropes, subverting expectations in the most entertaining and quotable way!

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Here at Short of the Week HQ, Bite Size Halloween is an initiative we impatiently await as the Summer comes to an end. Not only is it a diverse collection of shorts that we’ve loved discovering for the past three years, it’s also a platform for emerging filmmakers, especially in the genre universe. In this new season, we were particularly excited to check out S/W alum Eric Jungmann’s (Body of the Mined) new short Remote.

Lin Shaye in Eric Jungmann’s REMOTE (Photo Credit: 20th Digital)

Producer Valerie Steinberg, whose films have been featured many times on S/W (Blocks, Hair Wolf, Fry Day), and has produced Bite Size Halloween shorts in the previous seasons, stepped up as executive producer for the whole season this year. Eager to delve into the project further and find out what they look for and the plans for the future, we spoke with both Steinberg and Arbi Pedrossian, VP Development for 20th Digital Studio.  

S/W: Now in its third season, how has Bite Size Halloween creatively evolved and how will it continue to do so?

VS: The 20th Digital team continues to do an amazing job of identifying top emerging filmmaking talent and working with them to develop truly unique ideas for genre storytelling, and I feel that every season has gotten stronger.

AP: The biggest changes are the extension of run times and allowing R-rated content like blood and gore. We’re giving filmmakers more freedom now in both of those areas. 

Science fiction was included in the line-up for the first time this year | Jordan Duvigneau in Jon K. Jones’ FRACTURE (Photo Credit: 20th Digital)

S/W: “Genre” can be very vague and includes several sub genres of films. In the pitching stages, is this something you take into consideration, trying to cover as much territory as possible in terms of narrative, styles etc?

AP: We try and define genre as broadly as possible to allow lots of different kinds of filmmakers an opportunity to play to their strengths. So yes, we try to incorporate a lot of variety and different tones and points-of-view as we’re deciding on each year’s shorts. We broadened the creative brief by explicitly including sci-fi this year and will continue to look for ways to expand our short film programs. 

VS: I’m impressed how this team supports diverse points of view in the stories they cultivate – which is also smart from a business standpoint, as I think audiences genuinely crave these kinds of stories.

Brigette Lundy-Paine in Sam Max’s TICKS (Photo Credit: 20th Digital)

S/W: With Appendage doing very well on the festival circuit last year and this year Snatched is having a moment on TikTok, it’s fair to say the success of your films goes beyond their release on Hulu. Do you have a system in place to promote the filmmakers and potentially help them take the next steps in their careers?

AP: We try and support the shorts and filmmakers to get as much exposure as possible after their Hulu premieres. Everyone is featured in our publicity efforts and spotlighted on our social media. Some get highlighted by the press, such as a feature that ran in the LA Times, and others have been selected as Vimeo Staff Picks. A few have even aired on FX and Freeform with sponsorship cards. We also encourage all the filmmakers to submit their shorts to festivals and many have had success playing major festivals like Sundance and SXSW.  

Seeing which shorts resonate with audiences and critics factors into the feature development selection process. We’re proud to be able to get some of the filmmakers their first features. Newly released Grimcutty and Matriarch were both born out of the shorts program. Three great projects from women filmmakers are currently in post-production including Appendage, the feature!

VS: As a shorts pipeline to their feature slate, Bite Size Halloween is a brilliant incubator to create opportunities for new voices, while finding new ways to provoke, intrigue, and thrill audiences.