🎬 CUFF 2025: The Festival That Built Us

Back where it started, with five films we’ll never forget.

A year ago, we sat in a theater at the Calgary Underground Film Festival and asked each other, “Should we talk about this movie?” We didn’t know it then, but that was the start of Cade & Kit: Real People. Real Reviews.

One year later, we’re back. Not just watching. Not just reacting. Interviewing filmmakers. Hosting events. Filling chairs with new friends. And once again—talking about movies that made us squirm, gasp, argue, and occasionally question our emotional stability.



📹 Why CUFF Still Matters (Especially to Us)

CUFF isn’t your average film festival. It’s weird in all the right ways.

The programming leans bold, sometimes campy, often beautifully uncomfortable. It champions the undistributed, the emerging, and the offbeat. If Sundance is the studio audition, CUFF is the secret basement tape that gets passed around until it changes everything.

And for us, CUFF was the first time we really sat down to watch, reflect, and record what we thought—not as critics, but as real people. It’s our cinematic hometown. So yeah… we were a little emotional this year.


🎥 Five Films That Caught Us Off Guard

Across a packed 10 days, we saw a lot. But five films stuck with us. Each for completely different reasons.

Some were devastating. Some were absurd.
Some made us question genre boundaries.
Others made us… avert our eyes.

We’ll be sharing full reviews of each one in the coming days, but here’s a taste of the ride:

  • One short film tore itself apart, limb by limb… and we kind of loved it.

  • One feature had us staring at the floor in secondhand embarrassment (and full-body blush).

  • One adorable rug turned out to be... hungry. Very hungry.

  • One laundromat opened a portal to hell. No really. That happened.

  • And one Alberta-made exorcism film asked us: what if God showed up and we didn’t like what He had to say?


We’ll let you guess which is which.

(Or just stick around and read the reviews—there are twists coming.)




✅ Real People, Real Community

The other thing that hit us this year?
The number of you who sat down beside us. Introduced yourselves.
Told us you’d listened. Argued with our ratings. Agreed with our hot takes.
Brought snacks. Brought questions. Brought your own perspectives.

That’s the dream. Because not everyone has a crew to go to movies with.
And if you don’t? You can always sit with us. That’s what Cade & Kit is really about.


🎯 What Comes Next

Over the next few days, we’re posting five full reviews—one for each of our top CUFF picks. Each post will follow our usual format: premise, reaction, breakdown, rating, pairings, and of course... us spiraling.

But before we get into that:

Thank you, CUFF.
For being weird. For being wonderful.
For giving us a home to come back to—and a reason to keep talking.


🎤 We’re Cade & Kit. Real People. Real Reviews.

And CUFF 2025 was a trip.
See you in the next post.

And until then, if you’re heading to a festival… you can sit with us.


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info@CadeandKit.com

🎬 The Coffee Table: The Most Devastating Film We’ve Reviewed Yet

Technically horror. Emotionally wrecking. You’ve been warned.

We usually come into these reviews ready to debate plot holes, argue about genre tropes, and recommend snacks. This one’s different.

The Coffee Table isn’t just dark. It’s devastating. It’s the kind of film that leaves you physically sick, not because of what it shows — but because of what it forces you to feel. A slow, domestic spiral into trauma, denial, and irreversible loss, told with such restraint that by the time it breaks you, you’re already broken.

This is the most emotionally intense entry we’ve covered in the Top 13 Horror Films of 2024, sitting at #7 — and streaming now on Shudder and AMC+.




📹 The Premise: A Baby, a Table, a Tragedy

A couple brings home their newborn baby and a hideous glass coffee table with gold naked-lady legs. Yes, seriously. That’s the setup. What starts as an argument over bad taste becomes something unimaginable.

Mom steps out for the first time since the birth. Dad’s left with the baby, mid-assembly of the unbreakable coffee table. He’s exhausted, frustrated, trying to soothe his crying son — and then the unthinkable happens.

The glass shatters.
The crying stops.
And suddenly, we are not in comedy-drama territory anymore.


🎥 The Format: Domestic Horror, Shot with Surgical Precision

The entire film is set in their modest apartment. The camera stays close, sometimes too close. There’s nowhere to escape — not for the characters, and definitely not for the audience.

The tension isn’t jump-scare scary. It’s real-life horror — watching someone spiral after an irreversible mistake. Watching denial, grief, and guilt build until it’s unbearable.

The acting is terrifyingly good. The scene where the father changes the baby’s diaper — after the accident — is one of the most haunting portrayals of shock we’ve ever seen.


✅ What Makes It Work

• Unflinching emotional honesty. This isn’t sensational. It’s raw.
• Real characters in real rooms. No fantasy here — just heartbreak.
• Near-perfect pacing. It gives you just enough levity to breathe before plunging you back under.
• Genre-fluid storytelling. It’s horror because it’s horrifying, not because of a villain.


⚠️ What Doesn’t Land

• Limited genre texture. There are only a few traditionally “horror” moments — so purists may not vibe.
• Emotionally punishing. Like, truly. Not everyone wants to sit in that much grief.
• A quiet, slow-burn intensity. If you’re expecting gore or monsters, this is not your film.


💸 Should It Have a Bigger Budget?

Honestly, no. The claustrophobia, the raw camera work, the silence — it all works because it’s small. Bigger budget might’ve dulled the blade.


🎯 The Verdict

A brutal, beautiful meditation on grief, responsibility, and the unbearable weight of love. The Coffee Table is less about jump scares and more about emotional collapse — and it absolutely earns its place on the top horror list, even if it sits closer to drama than dread.

Kit: 8.5/10 — “I believed it. I felt it. I’ll lose sleep over it.”
Cade: 6.5/10 — “Great cinema, but more grief-core than horror for me.”


📺 Where to Watch

Streaming now on Shudder and AMC+.
But seriously: do not go into this lightly.
You need emotional padding and possibly a hug after.


🍿 Pair This Movie With...

• Snack: Nothing. Truly. You won’t be hungry.
• Drink: Red wine you don’t enjoy but finish anyway.
• Activity: Deep breathing. Maybe a silent walk. Probably a group chat check-in.


🎤 We’re Cade & Kit. Real People. Real Reviews.

And this one broke us a little.


🎧 Spotify⁠⁠⁠

🍏 Apple Podcasts ⁠

📸 Instagram ⁠⁠⁠⁠

info@CadeandKit.com

🎥 Milk and Serial: The $800 Horror Film That Somehow Ends Up Haunting You

There’s something oddly satisfying about stumbling into a horror film with no budget, no studio, and no business being this effective — and realizing halfway through, you’re fully invested. Milk and Serial is exactly that kind of film.

With a total reported budget of just $800 (most of which likely went to a single camera and one actor), it shouldn’t work. But it does. At least enough to land a spot on Variety’s Top 13 Horror Films of 2024 — right alongside movies with actual marketing budgets and VFX departments.

So we hit play. And then we spiraled.


📹 The Premise: Pranks, Psychopaths, and a Brick

Milk and Serial follows two best friends, Milk and Seven, who run a YouTube prank channel. Their content? The chaotic, kind-of-messed-up kind that gets clicks, concern, and maybe the occasional cease and desist. On the surface, their biggest crime is bad taste and overcommitment. But beneath it?

Something much darker is brewing.

The story opens with a birthday prank that goes wrong — but that’s just the start. The more we watch, the more it becomes clear that Milk has layered this “prank” with an ulterior motive. By the halfway mark, it’s no longer a question of surprise party antics. It’s a serial killer origin story hidden inside a YouTube channel.


🎥 The Format: Found-Footage with Intent

Shot entirely through handheld party cams, hidden setups, and “prank cam” perspectives, the lo-fi style isn’t a byproduct of the budget — it’s baked into the DNA of the film. The shaky lens, the grainy lighting, the out-of-focus moments? All intentional. The whole movie operates like something you'd find deep in a late-night YouTube rabbit hole.

And that’s both its charm and its challenge. While the aesthetic supports the story, it also makes for a visually difficult viewing experience. If Blair Witch-style cinematography makes you seasick, you’ve been warned.

But buried in that handheld chaos? A well-crafted villain who plays the long game.


✅ What Makes It Work

• Milk is genuinely terrifying. The character delivers chilling monologues to the camera, deadpan confessions, and manipulations that feel too real.
• The writing is shockingly tight. For a film that looks like it was shot on a dare, the script pulls off slow-burn tension with actual payoff.
• It goes there. The plot includes staged shootings, fake breakups, dark web livestreaming, and manipulation so deep it becomes existential.


⚠️ What Doesn’t Land

• The format gets in its own way. The shaky cam is immersive but exhausting. At times, it pulls you out of the narrative more than it pulls you in.
• Some of the emotional beats fall flat. We wanted more resentment, more tension between Milk and Seven before things got violent.
• The ending is ambiguous. We’re still debating whether that final gunshot was a suicide or just a double-tap.


💸 Should It Have a Bigger Budget?

Absolutely. There’s a better movie inside this movie, waiting to be reborn with a real camera crew, a lighting setup, and maybe three more actors. We’d love to see this as a fully realized indie-horror project — maybe Creep meets Host, with the unsettling charisma turned up even further.


🎯 The Verdict

We’ve seen worse films with a million-dollar marketing campaign. Milk and Serial is flawed, but it’s memorable. It proves that when the writing lands and the villain is well-developed, you don’t need a studio to scare the hell out of people.

Cade: 5/10 — “Great concept, but I need a tripod.”
Kit: 3.5/10 — “Fantastic villain. Needed more meat around the bone. Trash-adjacent — but high-functioning trash.”


📺 Where to Watch

It’s free on YouTube.
It’s under an hour.
It’s the kind of weird you bring to group chat.


🍿 Pair This Movie With...

• Snack: A questionable red velvet cupcake
• Drink: Anything with ice cubes and existential dread
• Activity: Text your best friend and tell them you trust them... probably


🎤 We’re Cade & Kit. Real People. Real Reviews.
And if you ever catch us talking to a brick on camera… just run.


🎧 Spotify

🍏 Apple Podcasts 

📸 Instagram⁠⁠⁠


info@cadeandkit.com



🎥 Meet Cade & Kit

The Film Podcast That’s as Entertaining as the Movies Themselves

We know what you’re thinking: another movie podcast?

Yes. And also—not like that.

Read about Cade and Kit in The Calgary Herald

Welcome to Cade & Kit, a film-watching, genre-hopping, reaction-heavy show where two real-life friends (and wildly different viewers) break down movies the way people actually talk about them after the credits roll. No pretentious film school jargon. No three-act lecture. Just a little chaos, a lot of opinions, and a shared obsession with why movies hit us the way they do.

 

🎙 So, who are Cade and Kit?

Think of it like this:

  • Cade watches movies with a steel trap memory and a soft spot for story arcs that actually make sense.

  • Kit watches movies with their whole chest and a willingness to be emotionally obliterated by a shot of someone standing in the rain.

Together? You get a high-functioning combo of hot takes, psychological spirals, “did we watch the same movie?” debates, and moments of deep reflection on life, love, trauma, genre tropes, and whether or not a cursed doll would vibe with your zodiac sign.


📺 What the show isn’t:

  • A breakdown of box office numbers

  • A scene-by-scene recap

  • Another “Let’s talk about Citizen Kane again” podcast (bless its heart)


This isn’t about ranking movies or proving we’re right. It’s about being in the emotional aftermath of a film and trying to figure out why it stuck, why it stung, or why it made us text our therapist mid-credits.

🍿 What kind of movies do we cover?

Glad you asked. We gravitate toward:

  • Genre films with a twist — think horror that breaks the rules, sci-fi with feelings, or rom-coms that leave you unwell

  • Underrated or overlooked picks

  • Indie gems, foreign hits, and festival finds

  • Sometimes… just whatever felt weird enough to press play on at midnight


🔍 What to expect in each episode

Each episode of Cade & Kit includes:

  • A summary that sets the tone

  • A full-on reaction breakdown (sometimes chaotic, always honest)

  • Deep dives into theme, tone, visuals, character decisions, and why Kit might defend the villain

  • Our signature pairing picks: a snack, drink, and activity that match the movie’s energy

  • Prompts or questions you can take to your group chat or next movie night


📝 Why this blog exists

  • We’re bringing Cade & Kit to the blog so we can expand the show’s universe a bit
  • Behind-the-scenes moments and episode context
  • Film theory… with feelings
  • Commentary we didn’t fit into the episode
  • Social prompts and pairing guides
  • And eventually: our favorite guests, listener questions, and curated watchlists


Whether you’re here because you heard an episode, followed a link from one of our “too real” pairing picks, or just stumbled in after googling “why did that horror movie make me sad?” — we’re glad you’re here.


🚪Your invitation to join us

Start anywhere. Pick a movie you’ve seen or one you’ve been avoiding. Read the blog, listen to the episode, scroll the reactions, steal a snack idea. There’s no wrong door into Cade & Kit — just come in with feelings, and maybe a drink.

First episode’s up next. Let’s hit play.

🎧 Spotify

🍏 Apple Podcasts 

📸 Instagram ⁠⁠⁠


info@CadeandKit.com