Shock! A New Horror!

Appetite is about mother-daughter relationships, diet culture, and flesh-eating creatures. It explores the horrors of being a teenage girl in a world that is obsessed with controlling what you eat. This gory short film is about Grace, a girl whose mother projects her own insecurities onto her daughter while a zombie apocalypse rages outside, threatening to break both the peace of their sleepy, conservative Australian town, and Grace’s self-control.

During the making of this film, I took on the role of writer and director – the script for Appetite was based on my own teenage experiences and was quite personal. It was my first time directing a short film, and worked closely with the actors onset to help them understand their characters and my vision for the film. I wanted to explore feminine rage in horror, inspired by works such as Jennifer’s Body, Raw, Teeth and Ginger Snaps, and encouraged the actors to let themselves try different ways of expressing, or repressing, their characters’ anger. However, I also had the unexpected responsibility of sourcing/making props and costumes for the film, as well as being the makeup artist. Over the course of Appetite‘s creation, I discovered a great passion for SFX makeup artistry – making our zombies looks bruised, sunken, gaunt, crusty and bloody was incredibly fun, and I would love the chance to do more makeup work in the future. I believe that the effort my team and I put into the makeup and costumes was really outstanding, and it looked fantastic on film; I’d never known that SFX makeup was something I would love so much, and I’m pleased that I had the opportunity to discover that passion because of Appetite.

– Finley Stapleton-Hamilton