VAMPIRE

Carlos Lerma’s "Vampire" is a short film about a fear that feels almost trivial on the surface—taking your shirt off at the pool—but one that carries the weight of every insecurity that defines adolescence. A teenager, teased into the nickname “vampire” for avoiding the water, turns the insult into a persona. The choice is both armour and admission, a way of laughing at the wound while never quite letting it heal.

The blend of live action and 2D animation gives the film its pulse. Lerma uses bursts of illustration not as ornament, but as windows into a private world—shame reimagined as humour, reflection replaced by surreal escape. The effect is playful but also cutting, showing how easily ridicule takes root in the imagination.

Humour is never far away, yet the film resists becoming glib. The boy leans into the vampire persona with a wink, but the performance holds something quieter underneath: the ache of someone who envies the creatures of the night for not having to face their own reflection. It’s funny, and it’s sad, because both feelings are true at once.

The pool party invitation that drives the story is small in scale but seismic in meaning. Does he risk exposure, or burn it all down? Lerma stages the choice not as melodrama, but as a release—an acknowledgement that survival sometimes looks like defiance, even destruction.

As writer, director, animator, and performer, Lerma carries the piece with understated honesty. His narration is measured, his gestures small, but that restraint allows the character’s conflict to resonate. Bradley Parrott’s brief appearance adds just enough grounding to remind us how easily one remark can echo.

In six minutes, "Vampire" distills the cruel theatre of self-image into something tender, funny, and raw. It’s indie filmmaking at its most vital—uncomplicated, imaginative, and unafraid to confront the harsher critic inside us all.