Short film: The Rougarou (2021)

Synopsis

A little girl wakes up, takes the machine gun out of the oven, and bakes a cake. It’s “welcome home” for her father, just out of prison. She asks him a million questions, like “what’s your favorite color? What’s your least favorite food? How did you get that scar on your head?”

To that last one, he answers, “It was the rougarou.” He shows her the scars that the rougarou left on his back. He warns her to never go outside after dark.

It’s a rough neighborhood, and there’s shooting after the lights go out. The father describes the shooter and says he had red eyes, like cigarette butts after dark.

The next morning, the little girl goes outside to clean up after the party and finds a gigantic footprint in the ground and hole in the crawlspace under their house. Could it be down there? Like everything else, she goes about solving the problem…

Commentary

This one’s depressing, but not because of the monster. People actually live like this. It’s well filmed, well paced, well lit, and very real. I liked this one a lot.