What do “Moonrise Kingdom,” “Bottoms,” “Twilight,” “Being John Malkovich” and “The Breakfast Club” all have in common? They are all movies senior film majors mentioned as inspirations for their various capstone projects. On Sunday afternoon, the Kenyon College Dance, Drama and Cinema Club held the second of two screenings of the final Senior Film Showcase in The Gund’s Community Foundation Theater. Between the 13 senior film majors, there were eight short films — two of which were collaborations between students — two screenplays, and one documentary. KCDC showed the eight short films that the seniors created, and at the Q&A following the screening, the attendees also got to hear about the experiences of the screenwriters.

The first of the films was “After Prom,” written and directed by Lucie Canzoniero ’25. “After Prom” follows five friends as they deal with friendship and relationship tensions and their different ways of coping in the wake of a friend’s death. The film was cinematographically striking as the five walked through open fields and made their way down to a river where the tension came to a head. Canzoniero explained that she found inspiration for “After Prom” in her own high school experience. “I always write about my own life. So I have always wanted to write about my high school friend group. And these are, of course, exaggerations of those people, but I thought that the morning after our prom was such a special moment and such a turning point in my adolescent life. So I thought that would be a good setting,” Canzoniero said during the Q&A.

Like Canzoniero, Diya Chabria ’25, who wrote and starred in “Anaphylaxis,” was also drawn to a project rooted in personal experience. The film follows a young woman who struggles to mentally recover from a severe allergic reaction while most of the people around her fail to grasp the severity of her life-threatening condition. In the days following the reaction, she has trouble shopping for food and eating — not trusting herself to avoid foods that will trigger another reaction — exhausted as her body recovers. Her friends judge her and don’t seem to care that her condition is life or death if it inconveniences them at a restaurant. The thesis of “Anaphylaxis” is summed up by the message shown on screen before the credits: “Don’t pity me for my allergies[,] instead, learn how to keep me safe.” 

When asked about who helped “Anaphylaxis” come to life, Chabria credited not just her cast and crew but also Thomas S. Turgeon Professor of Drama and Film Jonathan Tazewell, who taught the FILM 480: Senior Seminar, and her parents, especially her mom, who always made allergy-friendly food for her, even to bring to friends’ birthday parties. “[Tazewell] is the one person that really encouraged me to push through with the story,” Chabria said, adding “He really gave me the confidence to go through [with] the script and tell the story.”

“Following “Anaphylaxis,” there was a short intermission before the audience was transported straight back to the late 90s and early 2000s with “Full of Good Men,” written and directed by Mollie Shourd ’25 and shot and edited by Mia Tsuchida ’25. The film was a thrilling supernatural drama turned revenge fantasy. “Full of Good Men” follows college student Theo, played by Matthew Toth ’27, as he wakes up after a night he doesn’t remember and discovers he has a nasty bite mark on his neck. Theo goes about his life, as he tries to corner Alice (Ellie Kahle ’25), a girl whom it’s insinuated he has previously taken advantage of, to get her to accept his apology. In perfect-cliche-vampire-movie fashion, when Theo goes to leave a building, the sun burns him and the camera jump cuts to a nighttime long shot where an awkwardly running Theo holds his backpack above his head just in case the moonlight hurts him. 

As the film goes on, Theo remembers more about that fateful night, and he, along with the audience, discovers that he was bitten by a mysterious female vampire (Ella Newgarden ’25). In a flashback, the two make eye contact at a party before heading upstairs. They begin kissing before the vampire seemingly passes out. Theo checks to make sure no one’s coming and that she’s unconscious before unbuckling his belt and unzipping his pants. Before he can go further, the vampire flies forward, impaling her fangs in his neck as she makes eye contact directly with the viewer over his shoulder. Her enraged visage is reminiscent of Artemisia Gentileschi’s Judith Slaying Holofernes and this shot, much like Theo’s behavior, will stay with viewers forever. Shourd explained her choice of genre and theme, saying, “I thought it would be funny to do a guy turning into a vampire, but he doesn’t realize it. So then [it] sort of became, ‘how many vampire jokes can I fit into one movie?’ I [also] wanted to comment on what I think is a really common thing at this school of men who kind of pretend to be good guys [that] are, like, ‘woke,’ but are secretly kind of assholes.”

For the senior film majors, what defines them — across genre and medium — is their relationships with one another. “We all want to work with each other’s stuff, and we’re all friends. The film major group chat is always blowing up, always hanging out,” Shourd said. Chabria added, “We are also so honest with each other. Every Friday, we would show up, read each other’s scripts and give feedback. I think all of us took feedback from each person in the room, and it only made our films better.”