A screener of Marge was provided for review purposes.
SPOILERS THROUGHOUT
At 14 minutes and 59 seconds, Marge has just enough time to introduce a pregnant woman, show us the serial killer who raised her and leave behind one uncomfortable question about what gets passed from mother to daughter. That is a lot to cram into a short. Writers and directors Julia Kern and Michael Prieto do not completely pull it off, but they make a decent little horror film with enough personality that I understand why Beyond Fest selected it.
Adult Sadie, played by Devon Ross, has just learned she is pregnant. The news sends her back to one particular night with her mother. Ten-year-old Sadie, played by Liv Davenport, is dreading the first day of school while Marge sits around smoking cigarettes, watching old sitcoms and offering the kind of parental advice that probably creates more problems than it solves.
Then noises come through a baby monitor. Marge heads toward the basement. Sadie follows and discovers that her mother is a serial killer.
The movie is not really hiding that reveal. It is the premise, and Marge is more interested in what the discovery does to Sadie than in pretending we do not know what is behind the basement door. Now that she may become a mother herself, she has to reconsider the woman who raised her and decide how much of Marge may have followed her into adulthood.
Rachel Matthews is the strongest part of the short as Marge. She does not play her as a cackling movie psycho or announce the danger every time she enters the frame. Marge can be funny, careless and strangely familiar. That casual quality makes the darker side of her work better. She feels like a mother who happens to be a monster, not a monster temporarily pretending to be somebody's mother.
Davenport is also good as young Sadie. Child performances can wreck a short like this quickly, especially when the kid has to move from ordinary annoyance into real fear without making the change feel like somebody yelled "act scared" from behind the camera. Davenport handles it. Ross has less room as the adult version of Sadie, but she gives the framing story enough anxiety to connect the two periods of her life.
The film takes place largely inside one house, and cinematographer Jacob "Kuba" Bojsza gets enough out of it. The camera does not turn the location into a showcase reel. It finds useful compositions in the kitchen, hallways and basement entrance, then lets the rooms become more threatening as Sadie realizes what kind of house she has been living in. The grade is controlled and appropriately grim without crushing everything into darkness. It looks better than a simple short with a handful of rooms absolutely has to look.
My main problem is that the central idea is bigger than the movie. Fifteen minutes is enough time for the discovery and a final emotional turn, but not enough time to fully earn Sadie's new understanding of Marge. I understood what the movie wanted me to connect before I completely felt that connection. Becoming a parent can make you reconsider your own parents, sure, but there is a pretty large distance between recognizing why your mother made ordinary mistakes and reconsidering the woman who killed people.
That gap is where the more interesting movie probably lives.
Prieto and Kern list a feature version of Marge among their current projects, which makes sense. There is more story here than the short can comfortably carry. I want to know whether Sadie is afraid of becoming her mother, beginning to sympathize with her or using that supposed understanding as the first excuse for something already living inside her. The short opens that door and gives us a quick look through it. I am not sure it walks far enough inside.
Marge is not a great short, but it is a good one. The performances work, the filmmaking is controlled and the central mother-daughter idea has teeth. It feels a little more like the beginning of something than a completely satisfying story by itself, but it is a beginning I would watch again if Kern and Prieto get the chance to expand it.
Score: 6.7/10
Where to Watch
Marge had its world premiere at Beyond Fest on October 3, 2026. Its next announced screenings are the Dilated Pupils horror-shorts program at the Woodstock Film Festival on Saturday, October 17, and FilmQuest at Velour in Provo, Utah, on Monday, October 26 at 2:00 p.m. As of October 14, the complete short does not appear to have a public streaming release.