SNAP SHOT PRESS RELEASE | CURSED TOOTH TEST SCREENING
/SNAP SHOT PRESS RELEASE | CURSED TOOTH TEST SCREENING
Hold your jaw & check your gums because this tooth spitting film might have you questioning your dental proclivities [& I’m not just talking brushing and flossing].
Where our love for film [& coverage of the local indie scene] has grown over the last year. It is a special treat when we get invited to preview projects from one of our very own. /CW Guest writer, Jolee Mallmann, has been biting down on their own film project where they are writer, leading actor, and co-director of a story that reveals a “quarter-life crisis of the oral persuasion”.
They call it, Cursed Tooth.
On, Sunday August 30th, 2026, I arrived at an unassuming venue on Milwaukee’s south side. The gated yard planked by a stone wall building was marked with a small sign shaped like a tooth leading me to what I now know to be MKeUltra [a DIY performance space and recording studio run by musicians]. As the low lights and projector displayed an audioless screen that seemed to be an indie horror, the room showed dental inspired props, pub tables decorated with enlarged teeth [I would hate to see who those canines came out of lol], and BTS photos of the filming process.
This eclectic, yet well curated event, is just an example of the intimate details of collaboration and creativity that would be displayed to us through the film. The short film takes us through a comedic yet soft horror of untethered trauma of familial bonds, where a tooth ache is more than just a pain in the mouth. Elliot [played by Jolee] is unsure about what to do, with her teeth or her life, “she grows increasingly anxious and unable to face reality”. But what if reality starts to feel surreal? Like envisioning your teeth falling out, or imaging people eating jars of teeth? Are you losing your Sh*t or have you been hexed? HOW WOULD YOU KNOW?
Those who believe in the mystic, may try to find the meaning beyond normality. But have you ever heard of a dentist performing a root canal and an exorcism at the same time? That expertise spectrum is bonkers. But that’s just it. . . creativity bites into realms that we can’t always fathom and thus, great art that dialogues about the human experience is worth creating, watching, and chomping into [See what I did there? That was a tooth joke!]
Without getting into the gummy details [because this film is sure to get into the festival circuit and I would hate to be a spoiler], I will note that this film requires the audience to challenge what is possible. It also invites you to thoughtfully reflect on how adulthoodhood requires pieces of you that we may be reluctant to give. Is it a molar, time, connection, personal expression? Are their nightmares that haunt us, because they tap into tooth aching truths. Are waiting rooms a passive aggressive symbol of purgatory? WHO KNOWS!
From site selection, clever curation of “artifacts”, playful use of props, and strategic lighting, this team made something smile worthy. [Yikes, I can't be stopped with the tooth puns!]
Be on the lookout for future showings of Cursed Tooth.
& as my people say when an obstacle is ahead… “Bite down.”
/Lexi S. Brunson | Editor-in-Chief /CW
Follow us on Instagram at @cursedtoothfilm or @jolee.jpg for film updates.
