A Columbia grad student interviews and shadows a paranormal specialist as she investigates a possible haunting or possession which may very well be something much worse than expected. Dark Exorcism, originally titled In The Dark, is David Spaltro’s third feature as a director and second as a writer. Here he weaves a tale of demonic possession starring four strong female characters. His afflicted lead, Bethany Mills is a sweet and strong girl who fights and tries to protect her mother. Her mom is also strong, but at her wits end when Lois Kearne and student Veronica Carpenter come to investigate and ultimately support and help her, whatever it takes.
Tag Archives: Horror
Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 2016 Comedy Shorts Block: Part 2
Stained (UK) (2016)
Everything that could go wrong at tea time. A man is encountering minor annoyances in an otherwise fine afternoon. As he goes to the loo, once he’s done, he discovers that he is completely out of toilet paper. As he hobbles to the corner shop to buy some, he is haunted by his poo, taunting him, threatening him with a stain. Written by Mark A.C. Brown and directed by Phil Haine, Stained takes a basic life event, running out of t.p. and turns it on its head. The film is funny and it’s due in big part to the leads played by Michael Shephard and Chris Spyrides who keep a straight face throughout. Thefilm takes this situation and pushes it to its absurd limit and it works beautifully well.
Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 2016 Comedy Shorts Block: Part 1
The Phantom Hour (USA) (2016)
A group of people is called to a mysterious castle for various reasons and odd happenings abound. Written and directed by Brian Patrick Butler, this short pokes fun at vampire tropes with a classic dinner invitation set-up and a touch of modernity. Butler’s character of Bryce shows his sense of timing and his humor, being a perfectly awkward and funny assistant or Renfield to Nikolai. The actor playing this vampire, Luke Anthony Pensabene, is nicely impressive while not entirely scary which works in this setting. The film is really funny and goes for it, holding no punches, its old school, classic horror look ads to its fun with its credits in front of the film and nice cardboard décor in some parts. It’s campy, it’s funny, it’s a bit ridiculous, and mainly it’s a lovely horror comedy short, a difficult sub-genre to work in.
Honeymoon (Luna de Miel) (2015)
Jorge kidnaps Isabel and keeps her in his basement hoping that some conditioning and Stendhal Syndrome will make her his. Through torture and punishment, he tries to break her. The brutal story brought to the screen here is written by Marco Tarditi Ortega and directed by Diego Cohen. Together they create a kidnapping story where the victim is brutalized, violated, and tortured in many varied ways. The film brings an imaginative array of ways to make someone suffer and bleed. The way it is shot is relentless, keeping the camera directly on what is happening to victim Isabel at the hands of her captor Jorge who is a medical doctor, giving him better knowledge on how to make her suffer without killing her.
Sendero (Path) (2015) [Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 2016]
Ana and her friends head on the road for a weekend in the countryside. After breaking down and getting help from a delivery driver who warns them to not stay in the area, they keep going and come across a bloody, hurt, and scared woman on the side of the road. As Ana insists on helping the woman, things go very, very wrong. Writer/director Lucio A. Rojas creates a horror story that starts off more than a little reminiscent of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, then as the group of friends are taken to a big country house, it turns into something more reminiscent of “Frontière(s)” with a crazy with crazy family, humans turning into prey if they do not meet a certain series of criteria with many suffering gruesome injuries and deaths.
Alena (2015) [Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 2016]
After a traumatic event, Alena is forced to change school and ends up under the watch of a therapist at an all-girl private school. Here she attempts to make friends, love, and move on with her life as her past clings to her. As she tries to live her life and be happy, ghosts of her past haunt her. The film is based on a graphic novel by Kim W. Andersson and is adapted for the screen by Kerstin Gezelius, Alexander Onofri, and Daniel di Grado with di Grado directing. The characters are strong, well developed people, mainly female given the all-girl school setting, and varied.
Tales of Halloween (2015) [Blu-Ray/2-DVD/CD]
Just in time for Halloween 2016 comes one of the best horror indie anthologies of the last six years. “Tales of Halloween” is a sick, demented, and fun ode to the thrill of Halloween and its mythology and brings together up and comers and veterans of the horror film world to spin their own twisted yarns concerning the holiday many horror buffs hold so dearly to them. Epic Pictures grants fans a wonderful box set edition that holds all sorts of goodies for them. The best prize of all is “Tales of Halloween,” a movie that pays tribute to everything fun and horrifying about the holiday with ten short tales starring folks like Lin Shaye, and Adrienne Barbeau who unofficially reprises her role of Stevie Wayne as the film’s Halloween DJ who narrates every story. The neat touch to the movie is that every story unfolds within the vicinity of a normal suburban neighborhood on Halloween night.