Exploring Desire and Cosmic Fear: “In The Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction” Wins Best Short of October 2025

From cosmic horror in the California desert to nocturnal paranoia on empty streets and the quiet ache of forgotten souls, the October 2025 edition of IndieX Film Fest celebrates bold, uncompromising visions that merge genre craft with emotional depth. This season’s selections delve into identity, isolation, and the invisible boundaries between fear and compassion — revealing the raw humanity that lies beneath even the darkest cinematic worlds.

The top award winners include In The Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction by Adam Van Dyke (USA), a visually hypnotic and deeply personal exploration of desire, alienation, and queer survival set against the eerie expanse of the American desert; Clocking Out by Joshua Mueller (Germany), a stripped-down neo-noir psychothriller that traps its protagonist in a tense power struggle between authority and vulnerability; and Tears Are Part of the Ocean by Ryner Viray (Philippines), a hauntingly compassionate portrait of a woman confronting memory, madness, and neglect within the confines of a mental rehabilitation center.

Together, these works embody the spirit of IndieX Film Fest — fearless storytelling, distinct cinematic voices, and a willingness to venture into the emotional and psychological spaces where truth is most unsettling and most alive.

IndieX Film Fest is proud to announce In The Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction, written and directed by Adam Van Dyke (USA), as the Best Short of October 2025. Bold, sensual, and haunting, the film redefines the limits of horror through a queer lens, blending psychological dread with cosmic symbolism and the mythic landscape of the American desert.

A Journey Through Fear and Identity

Lost in the vast Southern California desert, Josh — played by Jorgie Goico — wakes alone after a night with a mysterious cowboy, portrayed by Arden Lassalle. As he wanders through shifting sands and surreal horizons, cloaked figures begin to appear, and reality bends into nightmare. To survive, Josh must confront not only the strange forces that pursue him, but also the buried truth of who he is and what he’s running from.

Merging the sensual and the supernatural, In The Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction uses the alien-abduction myth as a metaphor for the queer experience — the feeling of being watched, judged, or erased by a world that refuses to understand difference. The result is a horror short that is at once intimate and universal, personal and cosmic.

Crafting a Vision: Horror as Liberation

Shot across the eerie expanses of the California desert on a $30,000 budget, the film’s aesthetic is both hypnotic and disorienting. Van Dyke’s direction is steeped in influences from Dario Argento and David Lynch — rich color palettes, lingering close-ups, and dreamlike compositions that amplify tension rather than explain it.

Every frame vibrates between attraction and fear: the cowboy’s silent stare, the desert’s endless void, the alien light glowing on bare skin. Through this haunting imagery, Van Dyke transforms the “otherness” of horror into an expression of resilience and defiance.

The Director Behind the Nightmare

^{Adam Van Dyke, director of In The Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction}

A graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design with a BFA in Film, Adam Van Dyke has been building a reputation for crafting unsettling narratives laced with dark humor and striking visual detail. His work draws from the DNA of genre classics such as Saw, The Thing, and Suspiria, while exploring new ground through LGBTQ+ storytelling and representation.

Van Dyke began his career as an Assistant Director and Production Assistant across film, television, and commercials, honing his eye for production detail while pursuing independent projects through his own company. Over time, his short films have reflected a fearless engagement with taboo, identity, and desire.

A Statement of Defiance

“In The Valley is a layered exploration of identity, love, and the haunting experience of existing in a world that watches, judges, and alienates,” says Van Dyke. “At its core, this is a love letter to the deserts of the American West — timeless, alien, and sacred — and to the radical defiance of queer expression. The alien abduction becomes metaphor: a reflection of the forces that pull queer individuals away from safety, identity, and community.”

In this sense, IIn The Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction functions as both horror and hymn — a cinematic act of resistance that reclaims genre spaces historically hostile to queer bodies and stories.

Why It Captivated IndieX Film Fest

The IndieX Film Fest jury praises In The Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction for its originality, visual ambition, and emotional depth. The film reimagines cosmic horror through a distinctly queer perspective, creating a narrative that feels both daring and deeply personal. Its cinematic craft stands out — the visuals are meticulously shaped to sustain tension and emotion, transforming a modest budget into a visually rich and immersive experience.

Beyond its technical precision, the story resonates on a profound emotional and cultural level. By confronting the legacy of queer trauma and reinterpreting the horror genre through themes of identity and survival, In The Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction achieves something rare: it is both a terrifying experience and a moving meditation on love, alienation, and defiance.

The film’s dual nature — erotic yet unsettling, grounded yet cosmic — leaves a lasting impression. It embodies the very spirit of IndieX: bold, original filmmaking that challenges convention while speaking to universal human truths.

By receiving this award, In The Valley: A Cosmic Queer Abduction advances to the 2026 IndieX Film Fest Annual Awards in Los Angeles.

Additional Standout Winners – October 2025 Awards of Excellence

Nocturnal Suspicion — Clocking Out by Joshua Mueller (Germany)

After a long and exhausting day at work, a woman just wants to go home. But her routine drive turns into a waking nightmare when a man who claims to be a police officer stops her, pointing out a supposed issue with her car. What begins as a mundane encounter slowly unravels into a tense psychological standoff — a quiet yet escalating game of control, suspicion, and fear that grips both the protagonist and the viewer until the very end.

Director Joshua Mueller, a 28-year-old filmmaker and cinematographer from Frankfurt, Germany, uses Clocking Out as a deliberate step toward feature-length storytelling. Shot on a Sony ZV-E1 with a stripped-down visual approach, the 14-minute short embraces the aesthetics of neo-noir: stark contrasts, minimal dialogue, and long, suffocating takes that heighten unease. The film stars Julia Haase and Harald Etheber, whose performances anchor the tension in raw, human vulnerability rather than spectacle.

Conceived as a proof of concept for a larger project, Clocking Out succeeds as a chilling exploration of trust and power. Mueller’s direction channels the influence of Nightcrawler, Victoria, and Prisoners, while forging his own visual identity marked by restraint and precision. It’s a film that tightens its grip with every frame — not through violence or shock, but through silence, posture, and the slow realization that safety may be an illusion.

Surging Silence — Tears Are Part of the Ocean by Ryner Viray (Philippines)

Set in a mental rehabilitation center during the onslaught of a typhoon, Tears Are Part of the Ocean follows Sis Luz, a sixty-year-old woman with schizoaffective disorder who has waited all year for her family’s visit on her birthday. As the storm intensifies and her family fails to arrive, Luz’s inner and outer worlds begin to blur. Through long silences, minimal dialogue, and ritualistic pacing, the film draws the audience deep into her fractured consciousness, reflecting the fragility of memory and the quiet devastation of abandonment.

Filmmaker Ryner Viray, a graduate of the University of the Philippines Film Institute, approaches the story with rare sensitivity and visual restraint. Drawing from transcendental cinema and psychological realism, he crafts a poetic study of mental illness and social neglect — a film as much about the storm within as the one raging outside. His background as both a queer and formerly rehabilitated filmmaker adds personal depth to the work, transforming it into a meditation on shame, resilience, and the longing for connection within confining systems.

At the heart of the film is Madeleine Nicolas, whose extraordinary emotional precision gives life to Sis Luz. A veteran of Philippine theatre, film, and television, Nicolas is known for her acclaimed performances with Dulaang UP, Repertory Philippines, and New Voice Company, as well as her screen appearances in The Bourne Legacy (2012), Luksong Tinik, and Masikip Mainit. Here, she delivers a quietly powerful performance — a study in restraint and empathy that anchors the film’s quiet storm of emotion and memory, reminding us that even in isolation, there is profound humanity.