Archive: Author: Keri O'Shea

Movie Review: Cheap Thrills (2013)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Tristan Bishop

Films tend to say a lot about the climate in which they were made – from the nuclear paranoia of 1950s creature features to the Guantanamo/Abu Ghraib atrocities many claim had an influence on torture porn/ordeal horror. The horror film especially lends itself to reflecting the fears of its audience, whether this is the intention of the film-makers or not, and so, with the increasingly bleak financial outlook of global recession, we are now beginning to see films which reflect people’s fear of poverty. For instance, this week I saw both Martin Scorcese’s tour-de-force The Wolf Of Wall Street, inspired by the Occupy movement in its examination of the excesses of real life stockbroker Jordan Belfort and Cheap Thrills – which deals with extremes of wealth and poverty in a very different way.

E.L. Katz’s début film as a director (he had previously collaborated with Adam Wingard as writer/producer on several features) has as its central character Craig (played by Pat Healy), a man struggling to support his wife and child on his meagre mechanic’s salary. Upon learning that he is to be laid off he takes a detour to the local bar to drown his sorrows, when he chances upon his old school friend Vince (Ethan Embry), whom he has not seen in five years. Vince is doing a little better than Craig, but works as a debt collector, and isn’t above a little of the old strong-arm tactics. They are invited to sit and chat to an obviously well-off couple – The loud, gregarious Colin (an excellent performance by David Koechner), who snorts coke off any available surface, and the beautiful but quiet Violet, who seems more interested in her phone than being out at what we’re told is her birthday celebration.

Colin likes to bet, however. He starts off by offering twenty dollars to whoever can down a shot of tequila first, and this escalates until a disastrous strip club visit where Craig gets knocked out by a bouncer after being dared to slap a stripper’s arse. When Craig comes round they are in Violet’s luxurious house, where the party is just getting started, the drugs and alcohol are flowing, and Colin’s bets are about to get a lot more outrageous, perhaps even dangerous.

The message of Cheap Thrills is pretty simple – The rich exploit the poor, and retain control over them by pitting them against each other. Divide and rule, oldest trick in the book. It’s by no means a subtle commentary on our times. In fact, not much about Cheap Thrills is subtle at all – as befits the title of the film, there’s swearing, sex, violence, assorted moments of gross-out comedy and drugs. Lots of drugs. In fact watching the film sometimes makes you feel like you’ve attended the wrong party and been force-fed lots of substances that are working together to make you feel rather off-colour, and you would really just like to go home and hide under a duvet. The genius of this, of course, is that the film is putting you straight into the mindset of Craig and Vince, right into their ordeal, but the downside is that, well, you might just feel a bit queasy and want to hide under a duvet. There’s no light relief; even the laughs come at the nastiest moments in the film, and even though at the start we have some sympathy for Craig, this soon dissipates. The film appears to be trying to make us question our own behaviours and the limits we would go to for money, but the lack of a sympathetic character means it just ends up being nasty people doing nasty things to each other.

This doesn’t mean it’s a bad film by any means, however – the aforementioned druggy energy, nasty laughs and solid performances make it an entertaining enough watch, which is a shame, as it had the potential to be so much more.

Cheap Thrills will be released in the US on March 21st 2014.

DVD Review: Hideous! (1997)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Ah, ‘Grindhouse Classics’ from 88 Films – how I love that you are so defiantly, so delightfully neither of those things; but truth be told, I just can’t turn down your screeners for long.

Perhaps it’s the fact that I am such a sucker for punishment, or perhaps it’s the fact that I still find myself drawn towards the Full Moon label which makes up the bulk of the Grindhouse Classics releases, no matter how many times I get burned by various reconfigurations of hordes of little bastards – puppets, toys, vertically-challenged takes on the Universal monsters, even trouble dolls – plodding their way through their ninety minutes. Whatever the case, I sat down to watch Hideous! with the usual blend of curiosity and dread: curiosity as to the type of little bastard which I was about to see, and dread about what the hell they were going to get up to. Well, my presentiments were correct.

We begin our tale here with a band of heavily-redubbed modern day toshers – that’s someone who makes their living fishing things out of sewers, folks – undertaking the very labour-intensive and you’d assume ineffectual job of standing, peering down into a sewage processing plant, and jabbing at it pre-emptively with nets. Our head honcho says otherwise, though, and is just in the process of confidently announcing that he’s ‘seen it all’ when of course it turns out he hasn’t, and he pulls out a thingy. That’s as much as we’re shown at this time – but no doubt about it, it’s an interesting thingy, judging by what he does next…

Which is to get on the blower to a woman, name of Belinda Yost (Tracie May) who makes a handsome living selling medical oddities; you know the sort of thing, two-headed foetuses and such. She seems to be doing well at this, judging by her glass of Scotch and her pearl necklace (heh). Our sewage guy offers her the thingy and she’s delighted, immediately offering it to one of her wealthiest clients, a nice bloke called Napoleon. She pushes a hard deal but he acquiesces, happily leaving with the thingy which he cannot wait to add to his collection. But oh no! Someone else in the local area also collects medical curios, and this man, Lorca (Michael Citriniti), will stop at nothing to intervene, taking the thingy from Napoleon with force. Force in the form of a topless woman wearing a gorilla mask. Nine-tenths of any battle is won through surprise, and by fuck does Lorca’s assistant Sheila have that on her side – so she takes the thingy, now revealed to be a vaguely foetal thingy, back to Lorca’s castle (common enough in America) where he adds it to a rack of other foetal thingies. But it ain’t over there, and an entire mêlée of FBI agents, irate salespeople and of course the thingies themselves are soon battling for supremacy.

Usually you’d say, ‘you couldn’t make this shit up’; someone did, however, and that man is Charles Band, albeit alongside writer Benjamin Carr, who has a lot of Full Moon form. Likewise, I’d ordinarily feel bad about revealing quite so much of the storyline – but this is a Charles Band film. You know what’s going to go on, in a vague sense, and all that remains is to fathom what the inevitable critters will look like. To answer that question, our li’l monsters here are inexplicable possibly alien babies of some kind – sentient enough to write crude notes like ‘we hurt bad’ and strong enough to use crowbars, marginally uglier than regular foetuses and also occasionally malign, although for the most part (and Band is sane enough to not have them on-screen a tremendous amount) they just hide in wall spaces, looking. I had no idea what was going on. Meanwhile the adults squabble and deliver achingly bad lines in each other’s general direction, doing their best perhaps, but typically over-acting and looking confused. Most of the dialogue feels like ballast to pad the film out to feature-length, and for the most part, thanks to the rival collectors angle and their various scraps over the contested thingies, this felt like a really aggressive edition of the gentle, pointless British antiques programme Bargain Hunters.

It doesn’t quite stop there, though; in common with a lot of Charles Band films, things are ambling along as per usual when he will decide to throw in a scene which is unsavoury on so many levels that it jolts you out of your torpor. Hideous! has one such scene and, oh my, there was a hell of a lot of grot to unpack out of that one. Wrong on so many levels. Eww. The film soon drifts back to its regular pace, however…

That’s the thing with this movie, see; yes, it has a half-naked woman in a gorilla mask and yes, it has a scene involving one of the baby thingies which even the most militant attachment parenting people would retreat from, but for the most part, it’s just a bit dull. Band knows his creature FX here aren’t quite up to a lot of screen-time and the back-story is non-existent, so none of this can form part of the plot. He wants a feature, and isn’t quite sure how to get there – hence a couple of startling scenes, but not all that much in-between. It’s just not quite there as a so-bad-it’s-good film thanks to that factor, which, to be fair, several of the better Full Moon films have managed to be. Daft and oddly laborious, Hideous! derives most of its impact from the shock of finding out it was made as late as 1997…even less reason to swallow the ‘Grindhouse’ tag and visual style of the cover art, but there you go.

Hideous is available to buy now from 88 Films.

Editorial: An Idiot’s Guide To Movie Trailers

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Now here’s a new one…

Here at the site, we’re in the habit, if we’ve reviewed a film, of embedding the film’s trailer at the end of the piece. We do this so that if we’ve piqued reader interest, then they can straight away take a look at what the film may have to offer. Makes sense, right? However, we also pride ourselves on our diligence in not simply trotting out plot synopses in our reviews here; therefore it’s odd that, more and more, after taking pains to discuss the film in question in a thorough way without spoilering it, a potential source of spoilers would come from the film’s trailer itself. On a couple of occasions, I’ve watched the trailer for the first time after I’ve written a review, and decided that I just can’t embed it after all because it neatly unpicks all of my efforts in a minute or so – or, if I do add a trailer, I often feel I have to give a warning about what it contains. Only in recent years have I ever had to add the addendum to a review, ‘Watch the trailer at your own risk‘. To use a recent example, a couple of weeks ago I reviewed dystopian horror The Colony; it’s no world-beater but it’s a decent enough sort of yarn which, yeah, if you had your wits about you, you could probably see going in one of a handful of directions; that’s no reason whatsoever for the trailer to do what it does, though, and that’s to render down all of the significant plot developments which happen across ninety minutes into a minute or so. In effect, watch the trailer, and you will have absolutely no reason at all to watch the film. Call me old-fashioned, but surely it’s not meant to work like this. And yet, more and more films are going this way…

It’s legitimate to complain about film reviews which give the whole game away, sure, but likewise, it’s all very well getting bent out of shape at reviewers when the official trailer for the film goes and commits the same crime, with no warning whatsoever. I must confess ignorance here, and I’d welcome the responses of any filmmakers who may be keeping an eye on Brutal as Hell on Facebook or Twitter, but I’m guessing that it’s studios which have the final say on a lot of what goes into trailers, and if this is the case then it must be desperately frustrating to see what they think ought to go in, go in. I mean, you work hard to generate buzz about your film and it’s the very thing intended to promote your project which shoots you down; must be a pisser. Certainly, what you can expect to see has changed radically somewhere along the line…but why – are trailers no longer intended to tantalise?

Perhaps in these days of instant gratification, film viewership is just a drastically different deal; when a brand new film can hit the torrent sites within hours of its release, or it can even get leaked before it’s meant to be out at all, then the policy of dropping hints can maybe seem a bit like playing coy too late. Ditto that, when we have the phenomenon of social networking ramming spoilers into our heads at every turn, even if we ask it nicely not to; perhaps, for many studios and distribution companies, it now just seems pointless to try and hold back the tides. Could this be why a growing selection of movie trailers seem to be less about the tease, and more about flaunting as many of a movie’s wares as possible? It certainly appears that this is the way to go for some films, and getting a film noticed and remembered in these saturated and cynical times is more important than other concerns, even if it means that the mystery is sacrificed along the way. Hey, if reviewers are going to discuss the plot anyway, it could be a case of if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em…

As I say – you can call me old-fashioned, but I quite liked it when trailers were so much harder to come by and as such, retained their power to keep us at a bit more of a distance. It’s a genuine charm now, if you watch an old VHS cassette, to see the trailer reel at the start: these little snapshots from batshit movies which may or may not have found their way to DVD, Blu-ray or the internet, but which still look like a hell of a lot of fun. Back when these things were more clandestine somehow – with a very limited cult cinema press, fewer releases and of course no internet – perhaps their renegade status did most of the work, and they plain didn’t need to tell the whole story. Even the daftest old 70s sleazefests (which you can get hold of now) managed to show you everything, but still not show you everything. It’s a daft distinction, but it’s there as far as I’m concerned, nonetheless.

Or, for all of that, it could just be that a lot of people in the business of promoting film haven’t got a fucking clue about film fans. It’s not beyond possibility, is it? Someone green-lit the Carrie remake. Unimaginative and crudely-rendered films get distribution deals whilst gutsy, original storytelling languishes unseen; people love Paranormal Activity these days, right, so we clearly need more like that? And so on and so forth. I suppose, ultimately, however the movie-watching and making landscape may have changed, it doesn’t for one minute mean that it’s okay to find another avenue through which to ruin the surprise and enjoyment of a new film, least of all when so many of us are so used to that avenue being a taster and nothing more.

Long story short: I really don’t want to be a fan writer in a world where I have to actively warn people against watching the damn trailer. I would expect most people to agree with me; things may have changed these days, but they haven’t changed that much, so please let us be able to trust in the trailer even if all else is a risky business. And, if you have any involvement with this business, please remember a mantra which never goes out of style: less is more. Trust me. Films deserve the opportunity to stand on their own merits and we deserve the chance to let them.

Movie Review: Lucky Bastard (2014)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Well, it’s fair to say we’ve been offered found footage movies which cover a multitude of themes and genres over the past few years at Brutal as Hell, but a porno found footage movie? Yep, this is indeed the frame for Lucky Bastard, and when we got an offer to review it, I have to admit I tentatively raised my hand, not because I wanted to ogle the porn aspects (apparently there are already websites for that) but instead out of sheer curiosity about how found footage would work in this case…if nothing else, I thought, here was something the likes of which I hadn’t reviewed before. Would novelty be enough, though? Having sat through an incredibly banal found footage movie just a few days before, my hopes were admittedly not high that my faith would be restored in this particular format. Happily, however, what we get here is not just some thinly-veiled excuse to make a cheap piece of shit and sprinkle it with ass shots. In fact I was more than pleasantly surprised by just how entertaining and yeah, clever Lucky Bastard was.

For found footage, the initial scenes are pretty standard, but the movie gets these almost-obligatory crime scene set-ups out of the way and then quickly moves onto something altogether more engaging, though not before reminding us that we’re definitely in porno territory when a waiver appears on screen, telling us that the participants have given their permission to be featured…hmmm. And so, with that understood, we wind back in time by a week, and learn that Lucky Bastard is actually a feature which runs on a successful porn site run by the gruff but definitively worldly Mike (Don McManus) – and credit to the movie for playing with possible expectations from the get-go, initially seeming to set a couple of women up for the expected porn-torture-porn before revealing it’s all part of a shoot and – whoah – showing us that porn can even be consensual. Mike does a lot of different types of porn on his site, see, and he’s something of an entrepreneur: one of his most popular gimmicks is to invite subscribers to submit video blogs, explaining why they should get to be the ‘lucky bastard’ who gets to fuck one of the site’s hottest porn stars. For a new edition of Lucky Bastard, he has managed to persuade one of the girls, the legendary Ashley Saint (Betsy Rue) to do the deed, even though it breaks her ‘no amateurs’ rule. They select a guy from the submitted videos, book a plush house in San Fernando, and go pick up their guy, Dave (Jay Paulson).

He seems okay, although terrified, and evidently uncomfortable with the Lucky Bastard shtick whereby the lucky winner is filmed from the time of pick up to the scene itself – but Mike has a business to run, won’t be dissuaded from doing just that, and insists that the show goes on. The show does go on, and things go wrong, of course, in a series of ways which thankfully managed to carry some genuine tension along with them; some of the developments I could see, err, coming, and some I couldn’t – but overall, I at least cared about what was going on in a way which can be quickly lost (if it’s in there at all) in a shooting format which all too often threatens to degrade into an annoying dizzy spell.

For starters, one of the reasons that Lucky Bastard holds together so well is that it has a uniquely believable reason for everyone to be holding cameras, looking at footage, or for it all to be taking place in locations which are choc-ful of cameras. In fact, screw the mockumentary thing, porn allows this to work so much better; we seem to have at least one experienced cameraman and some tripods too. Then we have people who are eminently comfortable being on film in the first place, because it’s their living, and they understand how to appear in camera shots. Also, the movie happily dodges what I’d expected it to do, and that’s to fall into line and represent its characters, as per common consensus when it comes to porn as either ogres or exploited women, nothing more than the proverbial cannon fodder for something protractedly nasty and yet predictable to follow. Instead, we have real characters here. Particularly in the case of Mike and Ashley (where Rue’s performance was so believable that I looked to see if she was a genuine porn actress sidestepping into non-porn a la Jenna Jameson) there’s a real sense that they give a shit about one another. That’s refreshing. All the people in this film are by turns wry, sardonic and believable, and whilst not perfect, they have an element of charm.

Then, Lucky Bastard seems to work on two different levels altogether, again surpassing what I thought I’d be seeing here. On one level, to be clear, it’s a film which doesn’t take itself 100% seriously (which also helps in some of the scenes which can’t quite hold together as serious). You may snigger at, for instance, a dildo being left in the foreground of a supposedly menacing scene, or at Mike wondering aloud if ‘endangered species porn’ could be the next big thing. The script is slick enough to make you laugh. I like that. It also makes it clear that porn films like these are a product, so even though it shows pretty graphic sex on-screen (not hardcore scenes, but sometimes only for the love of pixellation) it also shows what happens after cut-scenes, and shows things going laughably wrong too, although sex is far more important for the context of Lucky Bastard – and that’s where the film shows it can be more interesting still.

Ultimately, I think what I liked about the film so much was how deftly it handled some pretty important modern-day issues. Yes, in a film about porn going wrong – I know, I know, I heard me too, but hear me out. It’s a film which doesn’t parade its bigger ideas, but by its very nature it’s asking questions about the intersection between the internet and real life. Identity, fantasy, and the relationship between the two are brought into a pretty neat focus during the film: when is a person acting, and when are they themselves? When a person becomes used to being filmed so much, does spontaneous speech begin to disappear – with a camera on a person, are they always going to talk differently, speak in some semi-scripted way because they know how they might appear (and is that why Dave is so resistant to it)? What control do we have or should we have once we’ve been filmed and that footage moves out of our control? To go back to basics – what’s in a name, even? I don’t want to represent this film as some great, lofty treatise on the nature of existence – it ain’t, it knows it ain’t – but it has ideas, and it uses a clever framework to hint at what might, just might be behind these. Sharp and watchable, Lucky Bastard has something about it, and even where it begins to falter slightly towards the end, I stayed grateful for this. As I usually have to add, though, watch the trailer at your own risk…

DVD Review: Muirhouse (2012)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

As a fan and as a reviewer, I can usually find plenty to say about the pre-release movies I get sent. It’s what we do here, after all. Whether I love a film or I hate it, I can – I hope – explain my response to it in a fairly detailed way, a way which might allow others to make a decision on whether or not to take a chance on the film in question. That’s my hope, anyway. However, Muirhouse has me at a complete loss. Muirhouse has been a transcendent experience unlike any other.

Allow me to explain that I am not giving the film the slightest scrap of praise in saying that. I mean simply that my initial indifference to yet another found footage movie altered as the film progressed. I moved from boredom, into confusion. From confusion, I became irate, and then angry. Eventually I overcame my anger, but to try and enunciate all of those emotions in a review? Forget it. You know how in Martyrs, Anna is tormented and tormented until she surpasses the physical plane, leaving her agonies behind? That’s pretty much what Muirhouse has done to my reviewing mojo.

Okay. The film starts with a shirtless man walking down a road holding a hammer, thence getting wrestled to the ground by some police. This is apparently Philip Muirhouse, an author, who has been at a haunted house making a documentary intended to accompany his upcoming book about …haunted houses. As you do. The rest of the film is his story, and I use the word ‘story’ in its loosest possible sense here. We are shown (and who the hell has edited this stuff together? When?) his preparations for said documentary, largely him doing take after take where he tries to introduce the damn thing and keeps making a mess of it (and are all of those attempts included here for posterity? You betcha!) before making plans to go to the notorious Monte Cristo house to continue filming. Oh, he’ll have to be there on his own. Oh. No reason not to carry on trying to make a documentary with no suitable equipment like a tripod or any perceivable point in mind. Bon chance, Mr Muirhouse!

That’s it. That’s the film. One man in a house. There is no character arc here, no beginning, middle or end, no increase in tension, no tension whatsoever, no plot, little dialogue, no resolution. No special effects. Nothing. If your taste runs to spending around an hour watching a man sitting in the dark doing fuck all except listening to the occasional thump from upstairs or occasionally running up and down stairs/in and out of the front door, camera in hand of course, then this might be for you. If you expect more from a film, then I guarantee you will be disappointed. Even within the lazy, derivative and nonsensical worst of this genre, this is a doozy. Whoever has put this footage together has made some baffling choices for inclusion (minute upon minute of a tape recorder operating? The botched intro over and over again? Stock footage of gardens!?) and call me a bluff old cynic, but it seems like a lot of the stuff here is simply padding to get the film up to its eighty minute total. There simply isn’t enough here for a film. NOTHING HAPPENS. And yet, even with all of the filler included here, there still manage to be ‘plot’ gaps.

Muirhouse is a lazy, aimless, pathetic excuse for a film. It has none of the elements you would expect, as a minimum, a film to contain. It uses a shooting style which has been done to death and somehow makes it simultaneously unbelievable and more tedious than other films of the same style. It lacks the courage of its convictions, giving the lie to its ‘supernatural’ theme by not bothering, or at least failing to include anything supernatural beyond things that go bump off-camera. It has no scares, and generates no interest in what happens to its by-and-large only character. When it has dragged itself along for an hour and twenty minutes, it just stops. It doesn’t even have the decency to tie things together at the end. It just stops. I cannot think of a single thing worthy of praise here. However, should anyone want an example of just what is wrong with a lot of modern horror cinema, Muirhouse could at least be held high.

And in the spirit of the film itself, here’s where I just stop.

Muirhouse will be released by Monster Pictures on 10th February 2014.

DVD Review: The Haunting in Connecticut 2 – Ghosts of Georgia (2013)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Much as I love supernatural horror, it has to be said that I’m one fussy bitch when it comes to the genre. Don’t get me wrong – it doesn’t stop me watching purportedly scary films – only frequently finding faults with what I do see. I guess, deep down, I’m always holding out for another Legend of Hell House or The Innocents, only to be reminded all too often that those who plump for supernatural yarns these days aren’t making films for the likes of me.

But, I mean, come on: look at the cover for The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia. Doesn’t fill one with confidence, does it? I know that the people who somehow get commissioned to do DVD artwork these days have two ideas; a woman getting dragged backwards across a floor, or a girl hanging backwards in a shape well, a bit like this. I know that the ‘based on true events’ tagline is more or less mandatory to the point of being meaningless. I also know that the possibility of a franchise is so important in these uncertain times that, apparently, a film set in fucking Georgia can still miraculously be ‘A Haunting in Connecticut 2’. And yet, to see all of these things condensed into one package…well, my heart can still sink, which is testament to something. It’s fair to say I approached this screener with caution, and what I got from it was more or less exactly what I expected.

The plot, as ‘re-imagined’ here, goes a little like this. A young family, mother Lisa (Abigail Spencer), husband Andy (Chad Michael Murray) and daughter Heidi (Emily Alyn Lind) move house to a historical old building in the boonies of, you’ve guessed it, Georgia. From the get-go we’re shown that mom is possibly a little unhinged and sees spooks, something which she deals with by popping anti-spook pills. However, the new place seems cool, and the arrival of free spirit/possible slut aunt Joyce on the scene spices things up a little. We’re soon shown that all the women of the family have a tendency to see spirits, even little Heidi, who begins to regale the others with tales of a Mr. Gordy, a character that the family are able to verify used to be the homeowner…although he died, back in 1979. Uh-oh. Nor is he the worst that the family has to deal with; other spirits rock up, and some of these seem decidedly less benign than Mr Gordy…

For those not in the know, it’s worth mentioning that the ‘based on true events’ line here has more clout than many. Back around ten years ago, there was a series of TV movies entitled ‘A Haunting In…’ and A Haunting in Georgia was one of the episodes; to be transformed into a movie, a great deal of the events reported by the real family featured in the earlier version have been significantly changed, and the presentation of their story has altered wildly, too. This is a real shame, because I’ll be honest: the original telling was incredibly creepy. Whatever you happen to think happened to the Wyrick family, their straightforward, earnest explanation of their experiences and the low-key dramatisation which accompanied it was effectively unsettling. It didn’t fit into a clear story arc and it had no neat Hollywood resolution; the most terrifying events which were recounted were often very minimal, and it was this unpredictable, nonsensical quality which made it work so well. Okay, so the 2013 version which starts with the Wyrick family story wears its heart on its sleeve, at least. The first frames clue you in to the style of horror which is to follow. But as a scary story, it is massively inferior. As in so many modern ghost stories, the filmmakers here seem to weigh the success of the horror against the number of jump-scares – a rookie error, I’m sorry, and one which places The Haunting in Connecticut 2 squarely in the middle of the sheer mob of films which all do this. When the film forgets that it has to be slicker, faster and louder than the previous version, it shows that it can achieve a few decently creepy moments. The less fanfare, the better – but reproducing the kind of tropes which are now so ubiquitous that they’re meaningless is a mistake. We don’t need spasmodic, long-haired girl ghosts in everything. We just don’t. It’s naff.

…And where the film does try to branch off, doing something novel, it elects to distort the first story in a series of head-scratching ways. In some respects, the introduction of The Bad Guy spook here where there’s a back story and a shock resolution makes the film less like a ghost story and more like a slasher; is there room for both elements in a movie? Maybe, maybe not, but the ways in which the film veers off into this territory felt awkward. Still, at all times it kept up a decent pace, and Emily Alin Lind’s performance as Heidi lends some well-enacted terror, which helped at least to imbue the film with some of the qualities it seemed to desire.

Ultimately, a good ghost story should make you feel as though you are standing on the precipice of something beyond your understanding, and it should make you realise your vulnerability as you do so. Although a decently-made film in terms of its cinematography and performances, The Haunting in Connecticut fails at this and so ultimately fails as a ghost story. There are some shocking missed opportunities here. Still, part-timers may enjoy the BOO! moments and be kinder about overlooking the somewhat schizophrenic approach to storytelling which got under my skin more than the horror.

The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia will be available on DVD and Blu-ray via Lionsgate UK on 3rd March 2014.

DVD Review: The Colony (2013)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

When I sit down to watch modern post-apocalyptic movies, I always find it interesting to see what, from the point of view of the Zeitgeist, we’re afraid of these days. What do we think is waiting in the wings, ready to consume us? Whilst we do still get horror stories based around nuclear warfare – the disappointing Xavier Gens film The Divide (2011) as one example – it’s nothing like it was back in the mid-twentieth century, when death by nuke seemed to many to be a very real possibility and this found expression in multiple horror and science-fiction films of the day. Nope; now there’s a new kid on the block, because prophesying about climate change has provided us with another potential end to life as we know it. The Colony (2013) is one such film which weaves a decent, if at times oddly-familiar yarn out of the elements. (Do you see what I did there?)

The year is 2045 and an unending snow has decimated the world’s population, leaving only small groups of survivors quite literally holed up in underground bunkers, doing whatever they can to maintain their colonies by looking for ways to perpetuate their dwindling food supplies whilst ever looking for a break in the clouds, some way they could access the sun’s power to produce fresh food once again. Things aren’t going well: their animals are ailing in their unnatural confines (“You know you’re screwed when even the rabbits won’t fuck”) and these small communities live in fear of the spread of viruses like the ‘flu. As if this wasn’t all bad enough, they receive a distress signal from another nearby colony, Colony 5; as all of the colonies have a mutally-assured policy of altruism, a small party, led by head honcho Briggs (Laurence Fishburne) heads out to investigate… I hope I won’t be deemed guilty of spoilers if I say that what ensues is not a big catch-up with the neighbours after a false alarm.

There are many commendable aspects to this film; I must say, I’m quite surprised at how many reviews have overlooked these, and indeed at how vitriolic a lot of other reviews have been. Firstly, the aesthetics of the film are gorgeous. Although we’re back to the whole snow/nukes thing in terms of how each fictional world came to be the way it is, I couldn’t help but think of the Fallout games (particularly the uber-bleakness of Fallout 3) during several scenes in The Colony. The existence of small, self-contained communities living in bunkers is an obvious comparison, but many of the urban landscapes, with their ruined buildings dwarfing the travellers and the remnants of the world as-was looking oddly grating against the lifelessness of the surroundings could almost be interchangeable. And that is no bad thing, to my mind, as games and movies edge ever closer to one another, why not have this sort of crossover? One of The Colony’s key strengths is in these perilous, pleasing and immersive visuals.

I was also interested that in the initial set-up it’s the preservation of the population, not overpopulation, which is at issue. Sure, not all dystopian horrors hinge on the hell of burgeoning numbers, but I liked the more co-operative set-up that people were trying to maintain at the story’s beginning. Is the film any less bleak for it? Not at all; by starting out this way it’s able to set the benefits of altruistic behaviour against the selfish survival instinct, and I found this satisfying to watch. Performances are decent; I didn’t recognise Bill Paxton as the meglomaniacal Miller, but he does well with what he’s given, and of course Fishburne is an old hand at dystopia by now. Funnily, despite his youth the Jesse Pinkman-alike Kevin Zegers is a bit of an old hand in horror himself, and in his role as Sam he also provides an occasional narrative voiceover during The Colony; again, I didn’t find this an imposition.

So far, so good. It’d be patently untrue to suggest that this is a perfect movie, however, and The Colony does have issues. Although, for instance, the film balances tension and action very well in its first couple of acts, it does feel at later points that it’s not quite sure what it wants to be. Is it a brooding drama, or an action flick? It definitely swings more towards the ‘action’ side of things as it moves onwards towards its close, and in a few ways I feel that this weakens the film. It sacrifices a couple of enticing potential plot lines to throw in more explosions; there are some wasted opportunities here, as well as a few sequences for high action’s sake which had me scratching my head. Indeed, for the same action’s sake, a few plot lines are very difficult to accept whatsoever – again, this is a shame. The Colony also falls into the trap of adding a few clichés along the way: some proselytising here, some rushed exposition there; an obvious martyr here, an evident dickhead there…

Still, for all that, I was motivated to keep watching. The Colony after all does what films are still primarily meant to do: it entertained me, even if there were glitches at times. I was intrigued by The Threat in the film, curious about the protagonists and – essentially – I wanted to see how their story ended. Sure, it seems unlikely that The Colony will become anyone’s favourite film of all time. It’s not going to change cinema for ever, and it won’t change your life. But you could do a lot worse with ninety minutes of your life and if you’re a fan of the genre, you too may get something out of this one.

Oh, and…don’t watch the trailer. It spoilers the entire film. Do the people responsible for these things not want anyone to actually bother watching? Or are they simply stupid? Jeez…

The Colony will be released by Entertainment One on 20th January, 2014.

BAH at 5: The Rise and Rise of Crowdsourcing

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

As threatened, here I’ll be continuing my look back on the main developments in the horror world over the past few years, and here, I come to one it has been all but impossible to ignore…

I refer, of course, to the phenomenon of Kickstarter et al; I’d also suggest that crowd-sourcing couldn’t have got where it has without the parallel hike in influence of sites like Twitter, but however it’s come to pass, in any given week it’s highly likely that at least one new hopefully-crowd-sourced project creeps onto my radar. Of course this isn’t exclusive to horror – it’s occurred right across the rather broad horizon of the arts, as old funding sources dry up and as the option of getting others to chip in becomes more established as a done thing – but perhaps, with horror as a known starting point for a lot of careers in film, horror fans may get more of these requests than most.

Make no mistake: there have been several crowd-sourced projects in recent years which have caught my eye. For instance, when an assembly of filmmakers like Jörg Buttgereit, Andreas Marschall and Michal Kosakowski decide to join forces on a project, asking for some fan support along the way, it’s very easy to see how they manage to hit their respectable target. We do occasionally feature Kickstarter appeals here on Brutal As Hell – although, considering the collective number of appeals we as a team routinely hear about, we don’t tend to post about it often, even though it’d be an expedient, easy way of generating fresh content and keeping the site lively. I believe I can speak for my colleagues when I say that there are good reasons why we don’t do this, and I’d like to discuss them here.

To return to the Buttgereit/Marschall/Kosakowski crowd-sourcing story, I thought this could be worthy of support because, in the case of each director, there is clear evidence of pedigree, as well as an openness about the project they have now completed. In some cases, the only sticking point is in wondering what in the hell we have come to, when even established (okay, cult) directors can no longer find the modest funding they need via other methods. Clearly, times have become difficult for filmmakers, and speaking particularly about the UK here, although it’s likely to be the case in other parts of the world, the (never frivolous when it came to horror) Film Councils are seemingly less likely than ever to cough up, as arts budgets are stripped back and a tenuous economy makes people in all walks of life more cautious about their expenditure. So far, so understood – and the crowd-sourcing phenomenon does at least afford an extra option to get shit done. However, one of the reasons that we don’t often get behind crowd-sourced projects on the site is that the sheer volume of them, and the nature of the beast makes it very tough indeed to sort the wheat from the chaff. Even attempting to do so can be an exhausting, even embittering experience. It is also a new system which is fraught with risk and flaws and, as more and more people hop on the bandwagon, there’s scope for things to get a hell of a lot worse.

One of the first flaws which comes to mind for me relates to the question of good grace. The Kickstarter charm school seems to have a lot of drop-outs, because surely, however keyed up you are by the film you want to make, when the first thing you say to a stranger is ‘give me your cash’, you’ve forgotten your manners. Social networking is a relatively new arena, sure, and the code of conduct there hasn’t been clearly established – but still. C’mon. It’s worth thinking about these things in real-life terms. Would you go around a party begging money from people, simply because you have enough in common to be at the same party? I’ve lost count of the number of tweets I’ve received doing just this, because I’m a horror fan. I look at the account, and the only tweets deriving from that account are the same, stock, ‘HEY! Support [unexciting zombie flick where someone’s friends wander around in bloodstained button-up shirts]’ – and a link to where we can do just that, if we have zero quality control.

That is a personal gripe, granted; there are more serious criticisms to make of the crowd-sourcing model though, and they relate to its fundamentals. When you pledge money to a scheme like this, there is absolutely no accountability whatsoever – and that, I am sure, appeals to just the wrong sorts of people, and will continue to do so until such time as any culpability is built into the model. At the time of writing, what you’re really doing with most of these schemes is betting on a horse where there’s no guarantee there’ll even be a race, let alone any possibility of you getting the returns you want. Even if there’s an end date by which time the requisite amount has to have been pledged, what happens next? If someone raises £10,000 for their vampire flick and decides at that point that they’d sooner make a comedy with the money, what can their funders do? If the film fails to materialise at all? Nothing, beyond complaining about it. We don’t even know where the cash is going to go – to a business account, or a personal one. Also, with the best will in the world, people’s circumstances change; the most earnest director in the world may find he can’t make the film after all. In all of these cases, paying people back is discretionary.

I am aware that the counter-argument here would be that people are offered the choice to pledge a little or a lot, and sure, most people can afford to give away £10 here or there, if they so wish. It’s just that the economic downturn has perhaps made us all a little bit more aware of what we’re doing with our money, just as it has with the usual funding bodies. It affects us all, and some more than most. We’re also being asked to speculatively pay for something before we have any idea of the quality of it, and as my recreational funds are limited, I’d prefer to know a little about the movie I’m paying to support, rather than hope and pray that my money pays for a film which a) gets completed and is b) to my tastes, and all the sweeteners in the world which I may get for stumping up don’t stop me noticing that crowd-sourcing takes a large amount of the financial risk away from the very people who stand to gain, if a film is successful. It’s a puzzler, and it’s unfair, although it masquerades as fair and fan-friendly. It’s not sticking it to The Man; it’s being The Man.

…And you certainly have to raise an eyebrow at some of the blatant misuses of Kickstarter in recent years. Some of the worst of these originate outside horror, thankfully, but we have had the likes of married-to-millionaire, singer Amanda Palmer getting huffy when asked why she wasn’t using any of the $1.2 million she raised on Kickstarter to pay any of her musicians; or why multi-millionaire perennial bellend and party to plagiarism Spike Lee was Crowdsourcing his movie, rather than pay for it himself. Hmm. Within horror, and without naming names, many Twitter users may have become aware of a certain ‘filmmaker’ who has been collecting money for years now for his film project via earnest, exclamation-mark laden 24 hour Twitterthons. Years later, there is still no film, plenty of outrage when questions are raised and, call me a pessimist, but I doubt that anyone will ever get their money back…

Well, it seems highly unlikely that this is a phenomenon that we will see the back of any time soon. Create a model like this which allows people to easily gather donations from those who show willing, without having to vouchsafe them anything for their cash, and it’ll roll and roll. As crowd-sourcing is here to stay, it’s also entirely likely that we’ll see more of the outrageous behaviour alluded to above; we should, though, probably try not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. There have been some positive outcomes, and there will probably be more. However, I for one would welcome a tad more jurisdiction from the crowd-sourcing model.

Whilst a system of reimbursement or (heaven forbid) rewards would be harder to moderate, it would encourage many people to participate. Offering the maximum accountability to those who are effectively throwing their money at something in blind hope of an entertaining, engaging – hell, a completed outcome, would be welcome. Those collecting cash this way would do well to be realistic, too: concentrate on small, realistic targets for close supporters who want to see what you can do next, rather than going cap in hand to people who will probably only remember you for being rude enough to do that. Don’t have close supporters because you haven’t made anything yet? Sorry – but perhaps you’ll have to pay for it yourself, as difficult as that may be. Don’t spam us; that’s rude too. And for those happy to contribute cash to Kickstarter, all I’d say is – be as prudent as you can be. We don’t need a gazillion more lazy, derivative horror movies, after all, however they get made…

Happy Birthday, Brutal As Hell! 5 Years in the Horror Scene, Part 1

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Happy birthday, Brutal As Hell!

It’s hard to believe, but this week Brutal As Hell has just reached its fifth anniversary, and it’s a real privilege for me to say that I’m still around as we celebrate that little milestone. Whilst I haven’t been with the site since the very beginning, I’ve been hacking away here for most of that time, and I’ve seen the site go from strength to strength along the way; if you’ll excuse a bout of mutual back-slapping for a moment, we have an incredibly strong team, a group of writers who certainly don’t always agree with one another (which in my opinion is one of our biggest merits) but who are all equally passionate about horror and genre film, finding time around some very busy personal schedules to demonstrate that passion in a range of regular articles covering everything from widely-released cinema to underground comics, interviews to indie movies, editorials to irreverent transatlantic conversations. It’s all good. I could just hug you all. I’m not gonna, but I could.

We were wondering, though, how to mark this occasion at the site in a way which took into consideration the sheer range of films and developments in (for want of a better phrase) the horror scene since Brutal As Hell first kicked into gear at the beginning of 2009. We have a big team feature coming, as well as some individual pieces on some of the more notable trends and themes which we have noticed during this five-year period. This got me thinking about these notable trends and themes, and what – on a personal level – I consider most important out of these. I started noting a few things down. An hour later, I had a very tattered piece of A4 paper and more ideas than I could possibly fit into one overarching article. Best laid plans, and all that…

So, for starters, here are some of what I consider the most significant themes or issues in the horror genre today. I make no claim that this is an exclusive list; but, as a fan writer of some years’ standing, these are things which I believe are particularly of note since 2009 – because a lot has happened since then…

1) There is no ‘horror audience’…there are now two horror audiences…

Straight in with a sweeping statement? I think it’s justifiable in this case, because I feel that particularly in the past five years (although there is no date set in stone and elements of this have of course begun to occur earlier and later), the horror genre has changed to accommodate a new demographic, and in many ways there seems to be little overlap between this new demographic and what I would call ‘horror fans’. A tentative term for a large and varied group of people perhaps, but when it comes down to it I’d identify people like us who regularly watch a range of films within the genre and probably relate to the genre as fans, reading about the cinema itself, knowing a little about its directors or regular stars and so on as ‘horror fans’; our engagement with the genre ordinarily seems to reach beyond the ninety-minute experience of viewing itself. That would ordinarily be the definition of fandom; but things have changed.

The massive influence of a still-burgeoning horror franchise like Paranormal Activity seems to have heralded a new type of horror fan: we now have a demographic who want something very different from their encounters with the genre. As such, the films which cater to them have developed a particular kind of horror which is all about bodily endurance. Jump scares are king; the more times you are manipulated into leaping out of your seat, the more this new demographic seems to deem the horror a success. If the film isn’t causing the viewer to yelp and jump, then it’ll relax a little and concentrate on making them squirm; the funniest thing about this is that these films often seem to appeal to, and are targeted at, ordinary cinema-goers who might, here and there, perhaps at Halloween or at other points in the year, circumvent the latest Jennifer Aniston rom-com to steel their nerves against the latest most terrifying film you will ever see because the billboard promises them they may well shit themselves. These part-time, multiplex horror-goers have certain expectations, and many of the most lucrative horror movies are very happy to cater to them.

Whilst you could make the case that The Blair Witch Project kicked off this trend for low-budget, high-profit at the end of the Nineties, setting the bar very high in the process, and that the Saw franchise really cemented the ick factor in modern cinema, upping the ante once and for all, Paranormal Activity has to be the apex (or the nadir?) of the no-idea, no-skill, little story, maximum profit venture. It plumps for the cheapest format, almost giving itself permission to look bad and make mistakes whilst dispensing with pace, again excusing this through the whole ‘found footage’ get out of jail free card. As long as there enough yelp-out-loud moments, however, people seem to still go to see these films. It’s not the dedicated horror fans that keep these films coming out year upon year; we’re more likely to be bewailing the fact than excitedly supporting them – but if they’re not for us, then it doesn’t matter.

You can tell a great deal about the target audience and how they are perceived by the way in which the Paranormal Activity films and those like them are advertised: TV stints, which cost a fortune, after all, have now more or less given up on providing anything more than the barest idea of the film’s plot. These days, budgets are blown on night-view cameras which are trained on hyperbolic audience reactions; a few convincing seconds of this is usually followed by a quick vox-pop from a grinning part-timer describing how ‘scary’ the film is. Online campaigns, such as they are, ordinarily work against the films in question, making horror fans trying to read reviews and articles grind their gears as they desperately try to close down the fucking pop-up which keeps on appearing on all the major sites. Grrr.

Of course, in so many ways horror has always been a bang-for-buck genre, a convenient stepping-stone to a decent profit and a good place to start for any budding filmmaker. However, in decades gone by – and I’m sure this isn’t simply a case of nostalgia – a certain level of ingenuity seemed to be necessary, even if things were frequently cheap and nasty. There was more breadth, more variety; people wanted monsters and stories as well as exploitation or Herschell Gordon-Lewis nascent gore SFX. These days, in successful cinema monsters seem to be the province of Pixar; we have vampires, but in their most successful incarnations of late they’re now the nervous virgins. When horror ain’t a hit unless you jump out of your chair, this reduces the scope possible, and that is a real shame, especially when the rise of the multiplex horror consumer has meant this approach has gotten its tentacles into other films, too. For instance, a decent and promising film like The Woman In Black became something of a yelpfest, and all of the still-incoming horror remakes seem to hinge on an approach of ‘same – but louder and more’. Hey, it makes money, just like found footage always promises to. In each case, the chances of high turnover are just too damn good, too tempting.

This sounds as though I am painting a very bleak picture of horror as it has come to pass over the past few years, and in many ways, sure, I am. There’s a lot I’d like to see happening differently. It’s not all doom and gloom though. Not by any stretch. Writing this piece has, in a roundabout way, reminded me just why I ever wanted to write for a site like Brutal As Hell.

Marc, our site founder, asked us recently to come up with a list of our top 20 horror films which have come out during the site’s lifetime – in other words, a list of films from January 2009 to the present. There’ll be more on this anon, but as I sat down to write this list, once I got going I realised there was an absolute wealth of brilliant horror cinema during this relatively short period. Films which are innovative, clever enough to forge their own mythologies or to present interesting, courageous developments on existing mythology. Films with writing and direction so good that you get a clearer sense of characterisation and plot within twenty minutes than you do in many films over ninety minutes. Films which have in some way or another stayed with me. All of this, and – with one possible exception from the list, as it’s a movie which has been hastily remade – I would bet good money that your average Halloween shitfest filmgoer would never have heard of any of them, much less seen them.

This is, obviously, a crying shame, and indicative of just how difficult it is for the good stuff to get out there in these testing times, but the fact remains: if I’ve seen something I love, and as part of my hobby and my passion I get to talk about it, then maybe – just maybe – this can do a little for the filmmakers behind that project. If one person reads a favourable review and sees enough in it that they feel prepared to seek that film out, to take a chance on it, and maybe to recommend it to someone else, then in some small way that does good. Even one more viewer is another audience member, and this may even reach across the divide to someone who would never normally have given something different a go. Big business horror is here to stay; the last five years have shown us this, and things seem unlikely to shift dramatically. But, sites like Brutal As Hell will always be around to honestly champion good movies (and say so when we hate them, mind you) and I can authentically say that this makes me feel proud.

There’ll be plenty more to follow, and plenty more to say about horror in the current day. But for now, I’d like to wish our readers a very happy 2014, and let’s hope that BAH will be around in another five years doing more of what I’m proud we do today. Cheers!

DVD Review: John Dies At The End

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

I’ve long been a fan of Cracked writer David Wong, and when I originally heard that his novel, John Dies At The End, was being made into a film, I was…optimistic, for sure, but cautiously optimistic. John Dies At The End was always going to be a challenge; film every element, and it would probably be four hours long at least. Miss lots out, and risk losing some of the best elements of the plot. Well, I needn’t have worried. Director Don Coscarelli – who has past form in translating batshit insane storylines to the big screen, it’s fair to say – did a sterling job here. This is a film which sticks close to the book in many ways, but one which wouldn’t necessarily alienate anyone who hadn’t read it either. More to the point, its blend of charm and innovation make it one of the strongest proto-cult classics we’ve seen in years.

So here’s the difficult bit, summarising the basic shape of the plot without giving too much away; if this is usually an issue when reviewing, then it’s doubly so here for a few reasons. Well, here goes nothing: David Wong (Chase Williamson) has a story to tell, something he really has to get out of his system, so he contacts a journalist by the name of Arnie (Paul Giamatti) and they arrange to meet up. Armed with a tape recorder, Arnie listens as Dave recounts the events of the past few months. These events start off improbable and move quickly into unbelievable, but one thing seems clear – at the hub of it all is a strange new drug nicknamed ‘soy sauce’. Dave’s best friend, John, was the first to try the sauce; Dave isn’t far behind, and it seems like this stuff ‘opens doors’. Doors to parallel dimensions, as well as to heightened awareness of certain visitors from these dimensions. And it seems that these visitors have plans…

None of that really does the film justice, and traipsing out a linear plot synopsis somehow misrepresents the film anyway. As a movie which deals with the possibilities of parallel worlds, however, rest assured that Wong really picks this up and runs with it, creating a hugely-entertaining yarn which translates really well to the screen, in a film that’s fast-paced and covers a great deal in an economical ninety minutes. The film does re-jig the structure of the novel to an extent, and misses a few things out (I was slightly sad that no wig monsters were present, but it’s a minor disappointment) but to Coscarelli’s credit, he has filmed a lot of things I assumed would never make it. Such as the meat creature…and, erm, the unorthodox door knob. I loved the book, and I had (and still have) very specific mental images of what certain characters and scenes look like, but Coscarelli seems to ‘get’ the book enough that his own take on things looks great.

Because this is a film which opts not to plough on for hours, it covers a tremendous amount of ground and because of this, I would say it’s a film which could be a challenge to follow for some viewers. It has to be, really; everything, from the source material to the screenplay, is ambitious. However the framing technique which is established early on – the interview with Arnie – does allow for a few moments of explication, and holds things together somewhat. The believable, charming bewilderment on behalf of our two chief protagonists makes you feel like you’re on their level too; everything here is deeply funny and well-observed, with a well-suited cast throughout. Essentially, John Dies At The End in either form is the perfect blend of a child’s imagination with an adult’s development, a ‘What if…’ matched by a ‘Well, if, then this…’ It really is something else, and it may present a lot to take in, but holy fuck we need this sort of originality and innovation in modern film.

It’s a crying shame that the release on this great movie has been held back for so long (it originally made it onto my Top 10 list in 2012) and Ben has already spoken for us all when he expressed surprise that, for all the things that happen in this film, the cover art has gone for something which doesn’t, but now that it’s becoming available, it’s a highly-recommended purchase. There are a host of extras on the Blu ray disc too, including a cast & crew commentary (I wouldn’t usually care about this feature to be perfectly honest, but here’s one which would be worth listening to!), deleted scenes, an interview with Paul Giamatti, featurettes on the making of the film and the SFX involved, casting sessions and the film’s trailer.

John Dies At The End will be coming to DVD and Blu-ray via Eureka Entertainment on 17th February 2014.

Horror in Short Double Bill: The Beast (2012) and Little Reaper (2013)

Posted on by Keri O'Shea

By Keri O’Shea

Well, I could go in for a big mea culpa about the sad lack of Horror in Short features here at Brutal as Hell lately, but I think it’d be best all round if I just got on with it, yes? Happily, today you can take a look at two very stylistically different but both engaging short films by director Peter Dukes. So far sticking to the short movie format, I understand that Dukes is currently working on his first feature-length film, also going by the same title – though not an extension of the same plot – as our first short, The Beast.

I have to say, I was genuinely very pleasantly surprised here; The Beast knows it doesn’t have the time or the space to reinvent the werewolf genre, but it is a very worthy addition to this genre nonetheless. It obviously knows where it fits in, too, with its very clear nods to the werewolf folklore created by Universal, and a set of opening credits which for all the world would fit well at the beginning of a Universal feature (and the same could be said for the film’s score, too, which works brilliantly here). The plot is straightforward enough: two men, Desmond (Peter Le Bas) and Michael (genre film regular Bill Oberst Jr) discuss the fate of Michael’s teenage son, Jacob (Alexander Le Bas), whom we understand very early on has been afflicted with lycanthropy. Initially, and in fear of the full moon, they tie the boy up but, well, a father’s preferential treatment makes Michael take pity on the boy, untying him so that he can answer a more mundane call of nature. Of course, this decision brings the situation to a close…

The film works brilliantly as a short, and again as a short on the topic of werewolves, because it wisely avoids two things. Firstly, it doesn’t feel the need to cram a feature’s worth of back-story into its twelve minutes, instead allowing the emotions and the precise situation in which these people find themselves to speak for itself. Secondly – with a few seconds’ exception which nearly derails things, but thankfully does not – it knows that werewolf creature effects are the easiest to get wrong so it dispenses with them. The budget has been far better-spent on the other elements: developing the theme of family and friendships, ensuring solid performances, finding a great location and shooting a film which looks both lavish, but subtle, with a pleasing palate and a real eye for scene-setting. Hell, it even has a punchline, albeit an equally subtle one. The Beast is a very strong short film.

Little Reaper, made earlier this year, is a very different entity, although it too teases out some ideas about family relationships in a strange, horror-styled setting. This time we get this via the medium of horror-comedy, and a style of comedy which I’d best describe as ‘quirky’.

Our premise here is that the Grim Reaper has a teenage daughter; apart from the skull face, she’s your standard stereotypical teenage girl, glued to her phone and apparently pathologically unable to do what she is asked to do. Hence, she is grounded, and the only way her dear old dad will un-ground her is if she adds a day of doing his job to her chores list.

Again, Dukes shows that he knows his genre by adding in a few horror references to the script here. There are also plenty of ideas at play, although perhaps there are rather more threads here than there need to be (I felt that the finale didn’t quite hang together, for instance). As a skit, it is however watchable and diverting, although because it lacks the economy of The Beast, accepting that these are different types of film, it felt less accomplished to me. Still, Buffy did pretty well by combining horror, folklore and high school, so there’s no reason that fans of that style wouldn’t like this one too.

Peter Dukes is evidently a hard-working filmmaker and he has a whole host of short movies in his filmography: if you have enjoyed what you’ve seen, then you could stop by his website and take a look at some of his other projects.