Steve Desmond’s short horror film “Monsters” is kind of briliant in that you know it’s going somewhere, and you thankfully want to see where. Desmond’s premise is pretty unique, as we meet a normal family that have holed up in an underground bunker during what is apparently the apocalypse. Despite their youngest daughter Jenn insisting she can scavenge in the world above alongside her big brother and parents, she’s forbidden from ever stepping outside and kept inside to keep herself distracted.
Good grief is Drew Daywalt one of the best indie horror filmmakers working today. It’s not many filmmakers that can deliver constantly frightening and surprising short films that pack wallops of surprise endings and twists that’ll leave you breathtaken. Daywalt is a master of drawing out the scare, and often times he even gets away with a jump scare. It’s not many filmmakers I allow to throw a jump scare my way, but Daywalt takes the often cheapened device and turns it in to a fun little way to book end his horror films. And damn it, he gets me every time.
“There is no terror in the bang, only in the anticipation of it.” – Alfred Hitchcock
Oliver Park’s “Vicious” is a masterfully done short horror film that’s light on the exposition but packs in a powerhouse of a fright. I literally flinched back in my seat while watching “Vicious” and it takes a mighty good horror film to inspire that kind of reaction from yours truly. “Vicious” is indicative of a major directorial talent and Oliver Park deserves to go on to a bigger cinematic career. I think he can deliver a truly excellent feature length horror film if given enough resources.
It’s the sheer absurd humor of Director and Writer David Cornelius’ short comedy film that I really enjoyed. It’s such an inexplicable scenario transformed out of a mundane situation involving a group of friends playing poker that I quite enjoyed where he was going with it. Even if director Cornelius never quite drew attention to the fact that a group of friends were casually playing poker, one of whom was a puppet, I still would have gotten a good laugh out of the unusual humor on display.
I have to give it to Joseph L. Martinez, “Knock” is a fun and scary Halloween treat that should be watched by folks that like their scares short but sweet. “Knock” is based around a simple premise but ends on a delightfully clever bang. Murielle just spent Halloween night with her friends in an abandoned mine. Said mine allegedly houses the spirit of an ancient witch who stalks you if you knock on the mine walls three times.
If I have one complaint about “Love’s Innocence Lost” is that I could have used at least five more minutes to catch up with the dilemma ocurring in Mike Clarke’s drama. There isn’t so much explanation as to what happened between characters Aaron and Dina, only that there were children involved, and the crime involved something where trust was severely destroyed. I wouldn’t have minded a lot more extrapolation with Paul McGowan’s script in to what was happening and even more hinting as to what went down that could prompt such a conflict of emotions between Aaron and Dina, in the end.
As a Star Wars fan, one of the biggest disappointments of sitting through 1999’s “The Phantom Menace” was watching the creation of one of the most amazing villains of the “Star Wars” cinematic universe, only for him to show up for about five minutes, be killed, and then never spoken of again. This character that was on mugs, and t shirts, and posters was almost non-existent in future films. “Apprentice” is a fantastic and dare I say perfect, fan film that shows what would have happened if George Lucas subtracted twenty minutes of screen time from Jar Jar Binks in favor of more emphases on the sheer danger and threat that was Darth Maul. Maul should have been the recurring villain in the prequels and could have salvaged the otherwise terrible films.