Juliette Lewis stars in By Design, screening as part of the Dairy Arts Center’s Friday Night Weird film series on April 10. Courtesy: Cold Iron Pictures
Once famously dubbed “the happiest city in America,” Boulder is the sort of place where people come to chase their bliss. But as most of us learn, finding it is easier said than done.
Shay Wescott, the creative force behind the Dairy Arts Center’s weekly Friday Night Weird film series, has some questions about the nature of happiness based on this month’s cinematic offerings: “Is it having a family; someone to care for (and never, ever, ever let leave the home you’ve created)? Is it becoming irresistibly desired and effortlessly admired? Or is it escaping your past trauma through euphoria-inducing alien tentacles? We’re not sure, but it’s got to be one of those three things, right?”
Family is complicated. Just ask Macy (Fabianne Therese), a young woman who finds herself in a harrowing struggle for survival after being abducted in the woods by a homicidal creature that sets out to raise her as its child.
What ensues is a stomach-turning slasher in the mold of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, blending the gore of New French Extremity with the hallmarks of 1970s American horror. But don’t expect a film that’s afraid to turn convention on its head. Anchored by an unnerving performance from nonbinary professional wrestler Max the Impaler, the 2025 Telluride Horror Show entry stands out as one of the few movies of its kind whose central slasher isn’t a dude.
“The novelty is refreshing, but it also complicates some of the more canonical exploitation of the slasher genre, which I found makes it that much scarier,” Wescott says. “It’s always a delight to watch horror with an audience, but for the sometimes very jaded horror fans, it was even more affirming to watch this next to a group of teenagers who were genuinely squirming in fear.”
“Shot on 16 millimeter, Dolly is gloriously grimy and not without its grotesque cinematic flourishes,” she continues. “But what it understands best about its ’70s predecessors is that to be truly, truly scary, you just need to go back to basics.”
What would you give up to become someone’s favorite thing? This question animates By Design, a bonkers body-swap film from director Amanda Kramer about a woman named Camille (Juliette Lewis) who trades places with a beautiful showroom chair.
Narrated by Melanie Griffith, this surreal allegory from the celebrated avant-garde filmmaker behind off-the-wall works like Ladyworld, Give Me Pity! and Please Baby Please is a singular celebration of the inner lives of women, delivered with heart, humor and interpretive dance numbers.
“Much like her other, always experimental outings, there is an underlying thesis about the constrictive nature of performing femininity — or gender at all,” Wescott says. “But By Design gives us more to chew on, taking shots at capitalism and materialism, melding the desire to own an object to the point of taking it on as an identity, and even something potentially more complicated and profound.”
“There’s an idea in certain practices of meditation about experiencing reality with ‘no preference,’” she continues. “I find it to be the most brilliantly frustrating concept, because if I’m being honest, I have a preference about every little thing — and I don’t think I’m alone. But a chair? A chair has no preference. And who experiences less disappointment? Less anguish? Less loathing? We often refer to the experience of being objectified and consumed like inanimate objects regardless; maybe it’s not so bad to be a chair.”
If you’re having trouble deciding if the latest from writer-director Addison Heimann is for you, start with this line from one of its central characters: “I feel like these days it’s impossible to deny the existence of aliens, I just never thought the way I would find out would be live-action hentai.”
Touch Me follows two co-dependent best friends (Olivia Taylor Dudley and Jordan Gavaris) who become addicted to the touch of an extra-terrestrial narcissist who may or may not be bent on world domination. The result is a singular interstellar romp described by horror outlet Daily Dead as “an orgy of anxious spirals.”
“Trying to describe this movie works best in the voice of Bill Hader’s ‘Stefon’ character from SNL: ‘This movie has everything — polyamorous cults, sexy aliens, euphoric tentacle stuff,’” Wescott says. “It’s maximalist on every level, but its self-aware sense of humor keeps it from feeling too self-indulgent. Setting a pretty high bar for what it means to be ‘weird,’ Touch Me is nothing if not ambitious, ridiculous and wildly entertaining.”
Dairy Arts Center’s Cinema Youth Advisory Board presents Everything Everywhere All at Once, a mind-bending, genre-defying ride through parallel worlds, identity and connection. In collaboration with the BVSD Student Exhibition’s “Third Eye” themed gallery, this screening taps into themes of unseen realities, alternate selves and the idea that there’s more beneath the surface than we can immediately see.
