Sitting down to watch Kate Dolan’s Catcalls before beginning this article, headphones on, fresh cup of coffee in hand, this horror fanatic had seen it all and then some. Yet at a certain moment in the fantastically effective short, jumped so hard, the aforementioned coffee launched into the air, spilling across my desk.
It’s not the first huge reaction the film has received, not by a long shot. At its very first screening in the Cork Film Festival as part of a showcase for Film Board funded shorts, the no-nonsense full-on horror film stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the family dramas and whimsical documentaries. “There was a man sitting behind me,” Kate explains, “and he went, ‘What...the fuck..?’”