Helmed by Jim Minton, Exquisite Copse takes its name literally and twice over: The work is an aggregation of short horror films from an international cast of directors, based on the flash fiction and poetry of genre writer Michael Arnzen, and set to composer Michael Mouracade’s exquisitely (sorry) serine and patient score. What results is analogous to a cinematic hand grenade. Once the seemingly innocuous package arrives, you stare it innately wondering to yourself, “Okay . . . . And . . .” only to be the naive victim to the cinematic explosion 17 minutes later as surrealistic horror shrapnel sits lodged in your brain. But, in order to be fair, like anything projected in a happenstance manner, not every single piece of cinematic debris will meet its intended target as parts of the work consequentially fall to the ground, having served no ultimate purpose.

Though not immediately daunting in that a work of flash fiction/cinema/whatnot does not avail itself to the time necessary to readily impress and influence its audience during its execution, the films of Exquisite Corpse masterfully meet their genre itinerary in that, only afterward does the viewer find that an image or a sound from one of the handful of films is adamantly gnawing away at one’s psyche.

Highlights include Jerry Cappa’s Artistic License, a very, very short work of a man narrating his execution of a woman. Cappa juxtaposes his skit’s wry visual fluency with a voiceover by Christopher Hackett as the hideous nature of the act being described jars the poetry of the moving images before us, culminating in optimum effect.

Jim Minton’s own iconographic The Scab is equally effective in its stunningly succinct and economic storytelling–replete with conflict, rising action, climax, and resolution in under a minute–a pithy personal exploration of a female’s introversion and ostracizing by society by way of 1950s-Era commercial imagery and tone as directed by the love child of Tim Burton and the Brothers Quay.

Lastly, and most impressive within the collection, is Lorelinde Verhees’s Gasp. The director’s amazingly vivid, harrowing visual of a flock of migrating birds indecisively, yet gracefully, floating back and forth in directional deliberation over a building is so emotionally absolute–due largely to the director’s masterful use of implied absence via negative space brought forth by the flock’s recently departed presence, which is exponentially multiplied by the foreground composition of a barrage of all consuming buildings that spill out onto either side of the frame–demands a second viewing after her audience realizes at the feature’s close that a story had told.

In short (sorry again), Exquisite Corpse is akin to slam poetess Maggie Estep deciding to do her own rendition of Edgar Allan Poe’s works. Though not every work is as powerful as the next (some pieces inspire to be stifled Master’s theses at best), Jim Minton presents us with a collection which, given the diversity of a viewing audience, is bound to pique everyone’s interest at some point given its impressive, Dali-esque 17 minutes. If nothing else, Exquisite Corpse’s ADD format becomes a polar paradox: The less admirable works pass by quickly while the more intriguing skits pass by all too briefly.

-Egregious Gurnow