Death Metal (4:48)
Dust; Facebook; IMDb; Short of the Week; Vimeo; YouTube

This 2016 short film was presented by Alter in 2019; re-released in 2023.

A death metal guitarist named Lars tries to earn some money by playing his guitar in a park, but he sucks. So later, his dad gives him a guitar that had been in the family for generations, which was acquired through a deal with Satan. There are rules that go along with the guitar, but Lars doesn't stick around to listen to them, and ends up breaking all of them when he goes back to the park. His playing has improved, but unfortunately, the axe head of the guitar flies off and starts killing or seriously injuring all the people in the park.

I feel like I might have seen this before and not written a review, but I can't remember for sure. But I decided to review it after I watched it in 2022, because I found it mildly amusing and all the blood and gore was somehow kind of fun. I'm not usually into that stuff, but I did feel like this short did a pretty fair job of representing the splatter genre. Which means some people would like it a lot more than I did, and some wouldn't be able to stomach it (or find it funny) at all.