Short Film: Nunja

Directed by Autumn Gieb, this is roughly 20 minutes long (excluding end titles) and I couldn’t find a date although the companion piece was copyrighted to 2014.

So, when I mention a companion piece you’ll notice from the movie poster I found that this and another (short feature-length) film entitled the Knight Squad played together and, on the Amazon release, they have been bolted together as Knight Squad with Nunja. The poster also mentions this being ‘Grindhouse’ and certainly they have gone down that tradition with film burn out, scratches and missing reels. However, whilst a Grindhouse aesthetic can be fun it does seem that too many budget filmmakers are using it as an excuse not to do more with less, but just to do less.

meeting the victim

So, we start with a couple, Lucy (C. Jade Diaz) and Jose (Rafael Medina), in a cemetery. She is worried, he is horny and pressuring her. Suddenly they are attacked by vampires but the grainy film quality and incredibly poor lighting conspire to show us very little. The attack is interrupted by a white robed ninja (Indrani Rauth) who kills the vampires. Lucy thanks her for the save but is asked whether she was bitten, she denies this but there is (just about, given film quality) blood and (with an apology) she is staked. The ninja ducks out of shot and reappears in a nun’s habit – hence Nunja… yes this is a nunspolitation.

bad fangs

The nun in question is Sister Maria Michaela and the novice Sister Portala (Evening Star Sciarabba) knocks on her door and enters her room to say that Mother Superior (Kathi-Jane Mahon-Haft) is looking for her as she did not attend morning mass. Maria is going to confession however, taken by Father Ignacio (Robert Senecal), and then to train. Her confession is regards impure thoughts (towards the Father himself) and we discover that he has thoughts about her too – nothing is developed as any storyline regarding this would be on the “missing” reels. Indeed there is little story developed at all.

staked cleavage

The vampire leader, Kael Hathaway (William Zimmerman), is rather upset about his vampires being killed and sends his second, Madra (Marissa Bond), out recruiting more vampires. As for the vampires we get very little. One bite turns, they then develop cheep Halloween plastic fangs (even Madra seems to vacillate between wearing decent looking fangs and the cheap plastic ones). A stake to the heart kills… or in this case an actor holds the very thin and flimsy stake close to their chest whilst playing dead – with the spectacular variant being to push the stake horizontal into the cleavage!

I can’t find an IMDB page at time of writing but you can watch it after Knight Squad on demand:



On Demand @ Amazon US

On Demand @ Amazon UK