(L-R) Tom Noakes and Joe Bird of “The Worm” attend the Midnight Short Film Program during the 2026 Sundance Film Festival at The Ray Theatre on January 25, 2026 in Park City, Utah. (Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)
By Adam Silverstein
Midnight at the Sundance Film Festival is meant to wake you up — and this year’s Midnight Short Film Program, which premiered at The Ray Theatre on January 25, does exactly that. Six filmmakers, each with wildly different sensibilities, invite the audience to join them on journeys that are uncomfortable, funny, or just plain unhinged. Every short here knows exactly what it is and none of them hesitate to take you along for the ride.
The Worm
Tom Noakes’ The Worm starts from a simple, unsettling idea. Kieran (Joe Bird, also appearing at the Festival in Leviticus) believes that if he doesn’t find a specific worm in his father’s backyard, something terrible will happen. So he digs. Relentlessly. The lawn is destroyed. His family grows increasingly alarmed. Kieran does not back down.
Shot like a darkly comic mockumentary, the short builds its humor out of escalation rather than punchlines. Bird is excellent, playing Kieran not as a joke but as someone deeply convinced of his own logic. The laughs come easily, but there’s also a sadness to watching a family try — and fail — to reach someone whose worldview no longer overlaps with theirs.
In the post-premiere Q&A, Noakes explains that the worm itself was never the real point. “Will Goodfellow, the writer, came up with the idea of telepathic murder worms,” he says. “But we dug a little deeper and realized everyone has their own version of the worm. The lengths that you’ll go to assign blame to something when looking at the ugly parts of yourself is too challenging to accept.”
Taga
Taga, written and directed by Jill Marie Sachs, takes aim at a familiar type: Western do-gooders whose desire to “help” outweighs their interest in listening. Kim Adis stars as Vivi, a Filipina American hoping to reconnect with her roots during a trip to the Philippines. Instead, she’s absorbed into a group of eco-volunteers whose cultural awareness feels theoretical.
Sachs plays the early scenes for humor, letting small moments of condescension pile up. Lisa Jacqueline Starrett is especially strong as Jess, whose chipper dismissal of local customs is delivered with absolute sincerity. The film’s tension grows from that imbalance, slowly bending the tone until the group’s casual entitlement starts to feel dangerous.
During the Q&A, Sachs speaks about her own background as a Filipina American. “I met a lot of people who were trying to change others instead of questioning anything about themselves,” she says. “I wanted to put that into something without it being overly preachy, so I made it into a monster movie.” And it works.
Homemade Gatorade
Carter Amelia Davis’ Homemade Gatorade is the loosest, funniest short in the program — and one of the most thoughtful. Told through sketchy handmade animation and voiced by Davis’ friends and family (including her wife, Lauren Davis, in the lead), the film follows a woman on a road trip to deliver her homemade sports drink to a stranger she met online.
The premise is ridiculous, and the film knows it. There’s a Facebook group called “Gatoride Enthusiasts of America.” The score hums with synthy optimism. And yet beneath the jokes is a real question about connection: Why are we so willing to trust strangers online, especially when what’s being exchanged is objectively strange?
In the Q&A, Carter sums up the origin simply. “The idea was someone trying to sell people something nasty that nobody wants,” she says. “And then I thought, ‘What if someone does want it?’” Homemade Gatorade turns that thought into a funny, sincere reflection on loneliness in the internet age.
Prime
Prime, written and directed by Meagan Coyle, begins with comfort and ends somewhere much darker. Claire (Katie Mumford) joins a utopian farming community after experiencing trauma. Everything is calm. Everyone is polite. Red flags arrive slowly.
The community’s insistence on eating “everything in moderation” and “ethically sourced” starts to sound hollow, then threatening. The film keeps you slightly off-balance, until the plot takes a shocking and darkly funny twist.
Coyle was refreshingly honest in the Q&A. “It comes from my guilt for eating meat,” she says. “I still eat meat and I feel bad about it.” Prime feels like a proof of concept for something bigger — a short that easily could, and probably should, grow into a feature. Or at least a Black Mirror episode.
UM
Nieto’s UM is the most visually arresting short of the program. Set among bird-like humanoids whose eggs appear haunted by demonic faces, the film unfolds with the internal logic of a video game — strange rules, escalating stakes, and no clear escape. Michiko Takahashi leads with quiet intensity.
Nieto didn’t make it to the Q&A, but the craftsmanship speaks for itself. Made in France yet deeply grounded in Japanese storytelling sensibilities, UM is eerie, playful, and impressively precise. It’s the kind of short that expands the definition of what animation can be.
¡PIKA!
Alex Fischman Cárdenas returns to the Festival with ¡PIKA!, a delirious and human descent into desperation. Jose Medina plays a man driven to extremes by an unbearable itch, spiraling through theft, sketchy encounters, and increasingly humiliating situations — all in pursuit of pain relief.
The film is riotously funny, then unexpectedly gentle. What begins as a physical problem turns into something emotional, even vulnerable, culminating in the realization that he’s returned to the one place he can be held. It’s a sweet story, as bizarre as it sounds.
In the Q&A, Fischman Cárdenas, who’s from Peru but lives in the U.S., shares that the ending came five years after the first draft of the script. “One day I was really depressed,” he says. “I just remember thinking, ‘I want to be back home. I want to be taken care of.’”
