{"id":22477,"date":"2016-09-27T21:11:53","date_gmt":"2016-09-28T01:11:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=22477"},"modified":"2016-09-28T02:10:57","modified_gmt":"2016-09-28T06:10:57","slug":"horrible-imaginings-film-festival-2016-comedy-shorts-block-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2016\/09\/27\/horrible-imaginings-film-festival-2016-comedy-shorts-block-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Horrible Imaginings Film Festival 2016 Comedy Shorts Block: Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"watchbear\"<\/a>The Phantom Hour (USA) (2016)
\n<\/strong>A group of people is called to a mysterious castle for various reasons and odd happenings abound.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Butler\u2019s character of Bryce shows his sense of timing and his humor, being a perfectly awkward and funny assistant or Renfield to Nikolai.\u00a0 The actor playing this vampire, Luke Anthony Pensabene, is nicely impressive while not entirely scary which works in this setting.\u00a0 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 d\u00e9cor in some parts.\u00a0 It\u2019s campy, it\u2019s funny, it\u2019s a bit ridiculous, and mainly it\u2019s a lovely horror comedy short, a difficult sub-genre to work in.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Zombie Playground: Ice Scream (UK) (2016)
\n<\/strong>In the countryside, two friends playing hookie run across zombies.\u00a0 As they run away, it becomes clear that the area is infested.\u00a0 Director Jason Wright, whose original story Jeremy Hill\u2019s screenplay is based on, creates a good zombie short which is no easy feat in the era of zombie oversaturation.\u00a0 The short is quick paced and the kid zombies are good at zombie-ing.\u00a0 The special effects by Asta Gostautaite, Roxy Ley, Jessica McAllister, Nicola Richardson, Norna Squires, and Claire White work with a fun last reveal.\u00a0 The gross teddy bear brings you in and that last reveal happily closes the film.<\/p>\n

First Like (Sweden) (2016)
\n<\/strong>A girl is sending\/posting selfies after getting home.\u00a0 As her likes accumulates, something shows up in the background of her photos.\u00a0 This short directed by Alexander Ronnberg, written by Sara Bergmark Elfgren, and starring Hedda Stiernstedt, Deniel di Grado, and Karl Johnsson builds tension fast and creates very effective jump scares.\u00a0 Its short runtime allows for a concise storytelling style and for its impart to happen faster.\u00a0 The special effects by Love Larson look great on screen, the setting (mostly) in one apartment creates a closed-in atmosphere, something the lead cannot run easily from.\u00a0 The scares might be jump scares but they work here and paired with the atmosphere created they lead to a result that is truly creepy.<\/p>\n

Watchbear (USA) (2016)
\n<\/strong>This student film (yes, student film) by writer\/director Cesar Saldana tells the story of a young boy and his protective Ted E. Bear who will stop at nothing to protect his person from the monster in the closet (or the one under the bed).\u00a0 The young boy is played by Chance Caeden who gives a great scared performance.\u00a0 The bear is played by Ruben Padilla who brings a badass\/offensive side to the old school stuffed animal.\u00a0 The way he plays the part makes the film as his timing and delivery are great while also being rather inappropriate.\u00a0 The score on this short is good and well paired and the way it\u2019s shot looks as good if not better than a lot of professionally shot shorts.\u00a0 This one is fun, offensive, basically it\u2019s awesome.<\/p>\n

#MurderSelfie (UK) (2015)
\n<\/strong>In this self-obsessed society, it only makes sense to have more than one horror short about selfies.\u00a0 In this one, a couple spending the night in runs afoul of home invaders and selfies the whole ordeal as if they were hanging out and doing anything else.\u00a0 The reactions of their public are very telling of today\u2019s social media atmosphere.\u00a0 This short written and directed by Tobias Tobbell is funny as we all know people obsessed with sharing every moment of their lives with their social audience.\u00a0 The horror elements are a bit absurd but work in the horror-comedy put forth here.\u00a0 The effects by James Blakemore-Hoy are ok but unfortunately not great, they are uneven and that can take the viewer out of the story. The film\u2019s pace and humor do make up for this and paired with good old narcissism from the leads played with aplomb by Nikki Runeckles and Karl Hughes, it makes it worth tracking down.<\/p>\n

Hello (US) (2016)
\n<\/strong>A ghost stuck in a hotel room develops an interest in the man renting it for the night.\u00a0 As she sweetly attempts to catch his attention, the viewer feels for her lonely plight.\u00a0 As she goes a bit more strongly in her attempts, the short becomes funny and finds its tone.\u00a0 This one room story directed by Christina Raia works with its sweet and funny lead who turns on the charm and communicated aptly without ever uttering a word.\u00a0 The man reacts in a natural way giving this ghost story footing in reality.\u00a0 Their interactions or more their existence in the same room works well and the short is effective.\u00a0 The film has minimal effects, but is there works.<\/p>\n

Part Two Tomorrow!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Phantom Hour (USA) (2016) A group of people is called to a mysterious castle for various reasons and odd happenings abound.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Butler\u2019s character of Bryce shows his sense of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1284,9,12],"tags":[219,367,477,501,938],"class_list":["post-22477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-festivalsevents","category-list-junkies","category-movie-reviews","tag-comedy","tag-foreign","tag-horror","tag-indie-film","tag-short-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22477"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22480,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22477\/revisions\/22480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}