Dead Northern Short Cuts – Jammy, Crak Hack and Downsized

Technology might be changing the ways we live, work and connect with each other, but some problems remain decidedly old-fashioned. Vengeance, loneliness and grief are all on the menu for our latest Dead Northern Short Cuts, although the filmmakers behind this trio have found some wonderfully strange ways of exploring them.

This time, we’re serving up bloody revenge with a side order of baked goods in Jammy, discovering why handing control of your most intimate technology to hackers is an exceptionally bad idea in Crak Hack, and entering a future where even death might not be enough to separate us from the people we love in Downsized.

Ahead of their screenings at Dead Northern 2026, we caught up with Lainya Craig, Brendan Cleaves and Ed Willey to find out more.

Lainya Craig – Jammy

Revenge is a dish best served with doughnuts in Jammy, a blood-soaked short following a struggling bakery owner whose life takes a dramatic turn after a brutally violent encounter awakens something inside her.

Starring Lucy Robinson, the film explores violence against women and the prospect of vengeance through a collision of dark humour, gore and practical effects. As its protagonist’s newfound ferocity begins finding its way into her baking, the ingredients behind her latest doughnut recipe become considerably more questionable.

Who are you and why are you heading to Dead Northern 2026?

My debut short film as a writer and director has been included in the Official Selection! As a lover of all things haunted and spooky, I’m so delighted to be screening Jammy in the world’s most haunted city.

I’m based in the North East, so I’ve visited York plenty of times. It’s a beautiful city with eerie reminders of its bloody history, which makes for the perfect setting to enjoy all kinds of horror!

This screening is an extra special one as our block is the opener for a premiere of a feature film that I also produced and assistant directed, Evil Thread. A very bloody double whammy!

Tell us about what it was like to be part of this production.

If I’m being honest, one of the biggest memories of the production was the fear I had stepping into directing for the first time. I had an incredibly talented cast and crew around me that I didn’t want to let down, but the community of creatives here up North are so brilliant and always look out for one another, so it ended up being really fun and not as awfully daunting as I imagined. I’m very proud of the film we created!

One of my favourite highs was bringing my dog onto set. He’s really special to me, so being able to give him a role in my first film is a lovely way to solidify our time together, frozen in film! He’s an XL Bully who has to wear a muzzle, both of those things are seen as quite taboo, so I wanted to use this opportunity to challenge that.

I’m also really grateful for the collaboration with Lucy Robinson, our lead actress. Lucy and I hadn’t worked together before this production, and since we wrapped filming a year ago we’ve been inseparable.

A few low/memorable moments include having the entire production stopped when we tried to film originally after issues with the location, meaning we had to stop and wait a few months before shooting again, although this definitely was a blessing in disguise to be more prepared!

We also had the police called on us due to the amount of deathly screams… that’s the fun of horror!

What part of seeing your film at Dead Northern are you looking forward to most?

I’m really looking forward to hearing the audience’s reactions throughout the screening, which parts they find funny or grotesque.

I love the opportunity to showcase work as a woman in horror, particularly with a project that features a female lead in dark humour!

Brendan Cleaves – Crak Hack

Long-distance relationships are difficult enough without hackers seizing control of your sex life.

Set in a near future dominated by virtual intimacy, Crak Hack follows a lonely man who turns to a high-tech device in an attempt to save his relationship. When hackers take control, however, his private life becomes their playground and an increasingly absurd series of demands pushes him into horrifying territory.

The dark sci-fi comedy takes inspiration from contemporary fears surrounding sextortion, spyware and connected devices, turning the loss of digital privacy into something funny, disturbing and deeply uncomfortable.

Who are you and why are you heading to Dead Northern 2026?

I’m Brendan Cleaves, the writer and director of Crak Hack. Dead Northern is one of those festivals I’ve wanted to screen at for years, so it was great to get selected this year.

I’ve heard so many good things about the festival and, honestly, any excuse to head up to York is a good one. It’s such a great city. As soon as we got selected, I booked the tickets.

Tell us about what it was like to be part of this production.

Crak Hack was essentially a self-funded production. I wrote, directed and produced the film, so I was pretty much involved in every part of getting it made. As anyone who has made something independently knows, that can be incredibly stressful, especially when you’re working with a tight budget and a very small crew.

Luckily, most of the crew are friends and people I’ve worked with before, and the same goes for a lot of the cast, so despite the pressure we had a really good laugh making it. It was a small crew, a short shoot and a pretty ridiculous film.

There were definitely moments where I stopped and thought, “Are we actually making this?” When your lead actor is running around a chicken farm half-naked wearing a VR headset, you do start questioning your life choices.

But that’s also what made it so much fun. Now that the film is finally out there screening at festivals and we’re getting to watch it with audiences, it makes all the stress of actually making the thing worthwhile.

What part of seeing your film at Dead Northern are you looking forward to most?

For me, it’s the audience reaction. Crak Hack is very much designed to take the audience on a bit of a rollercoaster, and we’ve had quite a variety of reactions to it at screenings around the world so far.

That was always intentional, but when you’re making the film you never really know whether those shifts are going to work until you’re sitting in a room full of people watching it with them. So I’m really looking forward to seeing how the Dead Northern audience reacts.

And, aside from that, I’m just looking forward to being in York, watching some films and having a pint or two.

Ed Willey – Downsized

What remains of somebody after they die might be more complicated in a world where human consciousness can be stored digitally.

Sci-fi dark comedy Downsized follows a software engineer on his final day of work as he desperately attempts to recover the digital consciousness of his late wife. Re-engineering the process that originally ‘saved’ her, he is interrupted by a co-worker and suddenly finds himself fighting to preserve what remains of the woman he loves, whatever the cost.

Who are you and why are you heading to Dead Northern 2026?

I’m Ed Willey, the writer/director of Downsized, a short sci-fi/dark comedy where all the characters have slightly questionable goals.

The dark nature of our film is tangential to horror, and as such we’ve found a welcoming home amongst the weird and wonderful genre festivals!

Tell us about what it was like to be part of this production.

This was one of those ideas that was rattling around my head for a while, and while the script took around a year to fully round out, the first draft didn’t even feature one of the characters!

Once we hit pre-production, stuff moved quickly, until… two weeks out from shooting, we lost one of our locations, which led to a rapid hunt for a replacement and a healthy dose of stress on my part.

The team was amazing throughout, working through two very tight days of shooting, and the end result made everything worth it.

What part of seeing your film at Dead Northern are you looking forward to most?

Audience reaction is the whole reason I do what I do. There’s simply nothing better than seeing the film alongside an audience who has no idea what’s coming and hearing the realisation in the room.

By far the best part of the job!

Whether the threat comes from another person, a compromised piece of technology or our refusal to let go of someone we’ve lost, Jammy, Crak Hack and Downsized all take recognisable human anxieties and push them somewhere considerably stranger.

There’s plenty of darkness running through this particular trio, but there’s humour too. From grotesque culinary vengeance to technological humiliation and morally questionable attempts to cheat death, each finds room for the absurd alongside the uncomfortable.

And if the previous Short Cuts have taught us anything, it’s that hearing a Dead Northern audience laugh, gasp or recoil might be almost as important as what happens on the screen.

More filmmakers from the Dead Northern 2026 shorts programme will join us in the next Dead Northern Short Cuts.