BEST FRIENDS FOREVER Resurrects the Urban Legend

Urban legends like the hookman, Bloody Mary, or sewer crocodiles live in the short-form. Their power comes from their repeatability at slumber parties and around camp fires. They don’t have conclusions like novels or the rule-laden mythology that comes with a film franchise. All an urban legend has is a monster, its tragic or ironic origin, and some victims. You never learn how to kill it, you just learn (vaguely) how it could kill you.

Because the urban legend has essentially been replaced by the weirder and potentially more dangerous creepypasta, I thought I’d heard them all, from the phantom hitchhiker to the stranger who sneaks under your bed and licks your hand while you sleep. Then I saw Best Friends Forever.

A short film written and directed by Emily Gagne and Josh Korngut, Best Friends Forever perfectly captures the atmosphere, tone, and pacing of a sleepover urban legend. Creepy, funny, and stylish, it blends the creature feature with the morality play and bathes it in ‘90s style, cosmic pink light, and a dash of eye-blood. Also: murder. A lot of it.

The film, set in 1996, starts with a retelling of the legend of Nancy — a lonely ghoul who goes from door to door at night, knocking, hoping to be let in so she can make friends (forever). From the very opening beats, Gagne and Korngut are clear about what kind of story this is, and they play with expectations and familiarly. The cast embody familiar social dynamics — the mean, the gullible, the guilty, and the dead — the camera lingers on porcelain figurines evoking memories of 90’s children’s horror, and the end credits include an original song about Nancy herself. If they took BFF and zapped it back in time 24 years, I have no doubt we’d all have memories of late night door tappings and close encounters with Nancy the best friend.

BFF’s excellence grows from its sense of humour. It’s not a horror comedy, there are no jokes, but it has a Scream-esque irony to it that’s intoxicating and disarming. While the heavy, hyper-referential style seems to imply the direction of the deadly proceedings, I found myself constantly surprised within the film’s 13 minute runtime. Perhaps the most magical aspect of the movie is how legitimate the Nancy myth feels. It’s casually inventive to the point where, even writing this sentence, I’m paranoid I got it wrong — that maybe Nancy wasn’t created for this film, and I simply wasn’t invited to enough sleepovers to hear the story firsthand. Every friend group has a Nancy, after all, and if you can’t point her out, it’s you.

Best Friends Forever is excellent, spooky fun. You can see it this weekend at the now-virtual Chattanooga Film Festival if you want one more reason not to open your door during this pandemic.