An Uber navigates winding New Zealand roads as dim headlights barely pierce thick fog. The car gurgles and halts before a decrepit bridge bathed in red haze. Startling strings forewarn danger. The driver, Tarian (Tessa Mitchell), steps out to examine the engine as its passengers survey the bridge. Of course, these passengers are perfect horror victims: chirpy, naive, pitiable. 

A kettlebell calls from under the bridge. At this point, my sweating palms flew to cover my eyes in the safety of Cinema Nova. What follows will have to remain suspended in mystery. 

I hate horror films and I certainly don’t like being scared for the sake of terror. Yet, I discovered from the audible glee of other Monsterfest attendees that the thrill of suspense must be the whole “fun” of it. 

This is Billy, written and directed by New Zealand filmmaker Michele Powles. The winner of the New York Screenwriting Awards (2024) upholds classic New Zealand film conventions of dry humour, heartfelt absurdity and cloven-hoofed characters. 

The seven minute short is described by Powles as “a spin on the billy goats gruff story”, complete with moral codes and symbolic character archetypes. This includes pathetically innocent casualties, no-nonsense police officials, a transactional monster, and a grieving mother that once again proves the depth of maternal sacrificial love. 

There’s no escape from this eerie place. Shot primarily as found-footage retrieved by police, we are awfully vulnerable to the horrors of Powles’ world. Limited to the dimensions of a phone recording, I found myself trying to crane my neck to survey the surroundings, to make sense of this mysterious reality. This style of cinematography serves suspense well, almost providing relief when the “phone” is dropped and finally instead of grass, we see claws, horns and the bloody faces of the camera people we hoped might never perish. 

The full reveal of the billy goat creature is perhaps weakened by the waxy finish of the costume, made entirely by puppeteer Paul Lewis. In the light, its woolly shag and impressive racks of teeth (all too similar to Pennywise’s spikey smile) was wonderfully gaudy. However synthetic the costume, Powles calls for audiences to look further from expected conventions of CGI edited horror; to question the ethics of verity, sacrifice and love. 

In Billy, horror resides in Tarian’s selfishness for abiding by the goat’s sacrificial demands, the unsettling wickedness of the goat, the coldness of the interrogating police officer and the realisation that you too might have also dealt with the devil to spare a moment with the one you mourn. 

Powle’s own son, Huxley Winton, convincingly plays Tarian’s dead child, providing an authenticity to this outskirted, reality-adjacent setting. Here, any amusement of the creature's appearance wears off. On this bridge—a symbol of obstacle and an echo of the goat's gruff fairytale—the film asks the price of life and warns of the tragic consequences of trickery. 

Whilst I maintain that watching horror films are voluntary torture, Billy meaningfully incorporates its genre to heed warning, rather than terrify for the sake of edginess. The surrounding line-up at Monsterfest had me wishing to expel any recount of the film's contents from my mind as soon as possible. But Billy left me curious of horror’s parameters and to consider the nuances of this cautionary tale in all its gaudiness.