It was rather difficult to know what to expect from a rather unprepossessing title like The Shed; it doesn’t give a great deal away, does it? I half-wondered whether it was going to be a straight-up horror comedy, but in actual fact, this is a surprisingly sober tale of teen angst, where the horror elements are often kept on the down-low – at least, until the final act comes around. Whilst there are moments of dark humour, these are few and far between. Horror comedy, this ain’t. It’s typically rather more subtle than that.
The film starts with a man getting stalked through some woodland by a vampiric creature (and we’re talking ghoul, rather than aristocrat here). The man, terrified, struggles to defend himself, but it’s too late: he gets ‘the bite’, and we all know what that means. However, in what’s perhaps a nod to Nosferatu the Vampyre, the creature has misjudged the dawn and – when the sun hits him – burns up. The now decidedly sun-averse victim escapes and flees the forest, running for the nearest shelter: this just so happens to be a garden shed alongside a nearby house.
Inside the house, teenager Stanley (Jay Jay Warren) is just as averse to the daylight, but largely because dreams of his now-deceased parents quickly dissolve and all is apparently not well at home. Living with his somewhat deranged grandfather, who is quick to remind him that he’s the only adult standing between Stanley and a return to juvenile hall, Stan also has to contend with bullying schoolmates (supporting the great cinematic tradition of representing the American high school system as a semi-feral hellscape). Sure, Stan has a best friend – the equally put-upon Dommer (Cody Kostro) – and a somewhat estranged girlfriend called Roxy (Sofia Happonen), but Stan’s life is represented as pretty precarious.
It’s not long before Stanley notices something amiss about the shed, though. Assuming a would-be burglar is hiding out in there, he sends his dog in to check it out; this isn’t a winning move, and the predictable happens. Seeing that this is no ordinary intruder by any stretch of the imagination, he has the issue of trying to work out what to do for the best. In some respects, as Dommer points out, this creature has the potential to do them a few favours; in others, it’s a burden and such a damaged boy is not best-equipped to deal with it.
Now, there are some plot puzzlers here: you may well find yourself wondering why Stanley doesn’t do a few fairly obvious things to rid himself of the creature in the shed, given he does do other, scaled back versions of them. In other respects, there are unanswered questions and it would be interesting to know more about the particular version of vampire lore used here, as some of the things which happen don’t quite ‘fit’ with received wisdom on cinematic vampires. However, in other respects, this film gets a lot out of what is, in many respects, a very simple idea. Mainly, this hangs together because Jay Jay Warren does a good job, and it’s hard not to warm somewhat to Stanley as this all progresses; he is a sympathetic character who keeps his performance fairly low key. Overall, The Shed knows how to handle its economical idea, and doesn’t take the most obvious paths through its plot – either a gore fest, or playing for laughs. This shows that there is some consideration here for keeping things more character-driven and understated, with ‘the shed’ itself often on the periphery of the goings-on. Actually, in a few respects it reminded me of Deadgirl (2008): two disadvantaged teens, a mysterious creature and a means of escaping from their dreadful day-to-day lives via that situation.
The Shed does slow to a crawl in places, before a final act which is far more rich in horror aspects (right down to a couple of mostly harmless clichés) but all in all, these minor misgivings aside, The Shed is fairly well-pitched and executed, a largely diverting and in places rather original coming-of-age horror.
Signature Entertainment presents The Shed on Digital HD from May 11th.