Writer-Director Mark Howell’s short is one of the finest examples of short horror cinema I’ve seen in a while. He wastes no time in explaining his characters to us, leaves our experience completely ambiguous and also leaves me wanting a sequel. When a young couple happen upon a house being sold in a seemingly mundane neighborhood, they decide to buy it under the house’s value and are talked in to the purchase by a content realtor who seems to know the house’s ins and outs as the new buyers prepare to move.
Category Archives: A+ Indie
Gothkill (2009) (DVD)
So far I’ve enjoyed the output Wild Eye Releasing has dropped on movie lovers laps. “Blitzkrieg” was a fun and salivating homage to Naziploitation from the grindhouse era and now we have “Gothkill,” another neo-grindhouse bonanza that recalls the satanic thrillers of the seventies with its tongue firmly planted in cheek. At a merciful hour and nine minutes long, Connelly’s satanic horror comedy seems to be here only to present us with the finest and most unique satanic and gothic performance artists of all time from fire breathers, to magicians and fortune tellers, all of whom are included in the film for lip service in a story that is not only much too convoluted to understand at times, but seems too long even at the length of an average television special.
The Greatest Fan Film of All Time (2008)
Jacob Drake is probably one of my favorite independent animators, because while the character models tend to be crude at times, there’s a certain dynamic charm they obtain to where the art slowly evolves in to outstanding models of figures and men that only add to the silliness and inherent great sense of humor engrained in the movie that is “The Greatest Fan Film of All Time.” For a sequel and a fan film the folks now working outside the defunct Bullcrank studios, “The Greatest Fan Film” makes good in its word of being a funny but epic finisher for a small group of independent filmmakers now seeking their own niche in entertainment.
Zombie Girl: The Movie
As a kid I remember wanting to make movies; I found out how utterly horrible it was to get a film off the ground let alone make a movie, and “Zombie Girl” is that movie about the ultimate movie geek making a zombie movie. The zombies in this movie don’t run. It’s gory. It’s indie. And the director is twelve! “Zombie Girl” profiles not just Emily Hagins, the preteen filmmaker looking to create her own zombie movie, but it explores the budding interest of filmmaking with the convenience of the film technology in the tech era and what access its created for people like Hagins.
Dead Fury (2008)
Frank Sudol’s “Dead Fury” is inspired by classics such as “John Carpenter’s The Thing,” “Evil Dead” and most likely “Night of the Living Dead” and as such is a clear homage that notifies the audience of its intentions before the credits even roll. I’m a fan of Sudol’s “City of Rott” even in spite of the general problems it had in the final act, and he follows it up with a surreal and unusually constructed monster in the house story about four friends out on a hunting trip who find… demons? I want to say Demons who act like Zombies. Either way, “Dead Fury” is a film that’s been met with a bit of scorn from critics, but I like it.
Awake O’Sleeper (2008)
I was watching “Awake O’Sleeper” on my computer, in my room, in the end of a boring day, half asleep, and ready for a quick film. And what I got at the end was a pretty damn great short musical from Brandon McCormick. And when I say pretty damn great, I mean this is probably one of the best indie musicals I’ve seen in a long time and you can only say that about the 5% of indie filmmakers daring enough to try their hand at the genre.
Paranormal Activity (2007)
In the days of overexposed, computer heavy FX extravaganzas, horror films that go for a more subtle build of terror are usually dismissed as cheap throwaways that just don’t have the budget to compete with the big studio thrill rides. It’s no secret that the “less is more” philosophy is the independent filmmaker’s best friend, but occasionally there comes along a movie that embraces its sense of mystery and uses a building sense of menace to its advantage.