Shorts International is one of the huge players in the short film world; a gigantic distributor of award-winning films including all the Oscar nominees.  We don’t cover them much simply because they charge $1.99 a pop through iTunes and the central premise of our site is that consumers won’t even watch, let alone pay for something they don’t know is good. Don’t misunderstand us though, Shorts International has one of the most amazing collections of short films in the world and with Halloween coming up they’ve leveraged that catalog into a Halloween Series. 28 films have been curated, each at the customary $1.99 price. Well except for one. For publicity, and to whet your appetite for more of the series, Roar, a 2009 film fresh awards at at several major festivals such as Rhode Island and Aspen, is being dangled out to the world for free. You need iTunes and an account to access the film, but if you’ve got those you can download the 15 min thriller, directed by the British filmmaker Adam Wimpenny. A veteran of TV, the film is exceedingly professional-looking, and is assured enough to let its suspenseful setup play out. The story is of a withdrawn young man, compelled against his control towards drastic action after  a young woman spurns his goodwill gesture. It’s not a horror film in the traditional sense, but certainly creepy, with a very nice performance from Russel Tovey as the young man. While I disagree with some of the more formulaic creative decisions regarding things like sound design, Roar is an accomplished film that exhibits strength in all the aspects of production. In that regard it is a good representative of Shorts International overall, as their taste definitely skews towards longer films that have the stylistic hallmarks of TV or film. Watch Roar at:   iTunes (need an account)