The second short film on day two of Dead by Dawn was Shame, a short film which tells the very simple tale of a woman who is ashamed of a part of her body, so ashamed that she hides it away...the question is why?

Interestingly there's no mention of this film on IMDB, either through it's director\writer Tom Geens or through its star Maryann Turner. Perhaps they too are ashamed of something, and yet they shouldn't be.

It's quite odd, and I mean that in a good way, for it's very British and very oddly British.

The first thing to note is that this really isn't the horror I'd expect from the Dead by Dawn festival which seemed to me to be all about blood and gore, how wrong I was. This little short shows a lot of humour and very insightful writing, however the ending raised more questions than it had answers. For me it revealed an entirely different story to the one we'd just been watching, and then doesn't take it anywhere, although you can see what it is saying about the child - innocence connection.

The audience, which was once again packed, really enjoyed this with quite a few moments of laughter, and none of it nervous.

I liked how, for the most part, featured slow reveals and how it touched on a feeling of creepiness that comes from the fascination of something not being the norm, particularly when it's about a part of the body.

An interesting, thoughtful and amusing short film which turns slightly darker and leaves a lot of unanswered questions.

Dead by Dawn