'St. Augustine' Short Film Review

Screen Critix • December 20, 2021

Two ageless vampires decide to seek out the daughter they gave up for adoption years earlier in Andy Kastelic’s short film St. Augustine. Here are our thoughts. Having recently watched and reviewed writer/director Andy Kastelic’s short film Blue Boy, we kind of expected his short film St. Augustine to be stylish and well-made. We were correct with our assumptions, yet the short horror movie is so much more than that.

Starting off at a small-town carnival years ago, we get to me Abraham (Andy Kastelic) as a sideshow act, which involves eating glass bottles in front of a crowd of families. One of the crowd happens to be a young woman named Lottie (Julia Lee Romero), who watches on in amazement. After the show, Lottie walks in on Abraham eating a live rodent and states that she knows that he is a vampire and that she wants to become one too. After warning her that being an undead bloodsucker isn’t all that – the never-ending thirst and hunger take up his waking hours – she insists.

We then skip a few decades and Lottie is trying to give birth to a child. The scene is intercut with some imagery of Abraham pulling out his fangs, and with him knocking the hysterical Lottie unconscious so he can pull the child out of her womb.

More years go by, and the couple is living in, what looks like, an abandoned apartment block. A young Girl Scout (Rylan Healey) soon arrives at the building and investigates the corridors looking for potential customers to sell them her cookies. She soon meets her demise courtesy of a hungry Lottie, who demands that Abraham finds the child they once gave up for adoption. Life has been lonely for the two vampires and Lottie threatens to bring the world to its knees should her child not be returned. This threat sends Abraham on a mission to reclaim the child and appease his bloodsucking partner.

The plot seems quite expansive for a short film that comes in at just under fifteen minutes, but it is moved along quickly by some smart editing. Never really lingering on a scene, St. Augustine rushes by in a flash, yet the short movie has many locations, especially as it is set in three distinct eras.

Two things you will surely notice as soon as the film begins are the cinematography and the dialogue. Cinematographer Jannis Schelenz has lensed this short film to perfection. The film is stunning to look at throughout with fantastic use of lighting and framing. The look of St. Augustine takes the short to another level.

As for the dialogue, Andy Kastelic has done an excellent job of making it feel almost poetic. From the voiceovers to the lines between Lottie and Abraham, everything sounds like it is said to a rich rhythm coming from some supernatural creature’s vivid dream. The music, provided by a variety of artists, really goes hand-in-hand with the visuals too.

We gave Blue Boy a good score in a previous review. It was a highly stylized film but with a few issues dotted about. Here, St Augustine has no such issues. Not only is it stylish, but it’s captivating throughout. The performances are great, the script is great and it looks fantastic. Highly recommended. Five of five stars.

By Carl Burgess, © Screen Critix