“Midnight Movies” Shorts Block
Director Jill Gevargizian’s short “Call Girl” watches like a short interlude you’d probably see in a digital horror anthology similar to “V/H/S/.” And I mean that as a compliment. As a short but sweet little horror tale writer Eric Havens’ script has all the classic tropes of the genre. There’s the vile enemy, the victim, the set up, the twist, and the juicy comeuppance.
Laurence Harvey of “Human Centipede” fame plays a nameless man who is preparing to meet up with a call girl in his house. There he’s set up a web camera for an unseen friend with who he’s made the spectator for the meeting. When the beautiful call girl shows up, the John greets her with some reluctance, and of course a crowbar to the head, viciously murdering her. Of course, nothing is ever as it seems, and events unfold in “Call Girl” with a nice bit of karmic justice.
While I kind of saw where the whole movie was headed, I still had a good time, especially with the way director Gevargizian stages the entire film. Rather than a typically shot movie, we see the events unfold through the fish eye lens of the web camera, and we just know that whoever is behind the camera is probably now on borrowed time. “Call Girl” is a nice little slice of gory, gooey horror with great turns by Harvey and Risk. Director Gevargizian is just full of surprises and neat ideas for these horror shorts, as they touch down on real world horrors, and twists them just a bit to fit the appetites of all horror fans.
The Final Girls Berlin Film Festival runs every year from January 31st to February 3rd.