This week, we’ve got four new films: “Maxxxine,” “Tarot,” “Cursed Waters: Creature of Lake Okanagan,” and the very weird “Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person,” all recently released. We’ll go back a few years and watch “Insidious 2: Chapter 2” from 2013 as we work toward completing that series.
We’ve also got four fun shorts this week as well.
Since our little restructuring last month, we’ve decided to bump up the benefits for paying subscribers. Later this week, we will also send out our first subscriber-only newsletter. In this first one, we’ll examine all the movies in “The Prophecy” series, mostly starring Christopher Walker. We’re not cutting back on the free newsletters, but we’re offering more than we did to the paid people. Subscribers also get full access to the archive of more than three years of back issues, which is easily searchable.
Paid subscription info ($4.95/month or #$50/year) can be found at https://horrorweekly.com
Get all our reviews once a week: https://horrorweekly.com
Check out all our books with one easy link: https://horrormonthly.com/
Full-Length Films:
MaXXXine (2024)
● Directed by Ti West
● Written by Ti West
● Stars Mia Goth, Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan
● Run Time: 1 Hour, 43 Minutes
● Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This continues on with the adventures of Maxine, now trying to make it big in Hollywood. Mia Goth and the rest of the cast are very good, the retro look of it is fun, and it’s cool how they work in the facade of movie sets and movies in progress. But it’s too long and drags, and it’s hard to root for the lead character who is fundamentally despicable. Mixed feelings on this one.
Spoilery Synopsis
We watch old 1959 footage of a girl dancing. Her father’s a preacher, and he tells little Maxine that she can be whatever she wants to be. We cut to adult Maxine who is doing an audition for a movie. She is nearly 33, and she knows she’s starting to get too old for porn, now she wants to be in “real” movies. She does a dramatic scene, and the casting people are impressed, but they still want to see her boobs. Credits roll as we see 1985 news stories. We are reminded just how weird the 80s really were. The Night Stalker murders are mentioned repeatedly.
After the audition, Maxine walks to a porn studio, snorts some coke, and gets ready for a different acting job. Her agent calls and says she didn’t get that good part, but she has been cast in a new horror film.
We cut to a “peep show” where a man in black leather and a hat watches a woman undress. Later, Maxine gets caught in a dead-end alley with a man carrying a knife. She pulls her gun and makes him strip naked. Then she does something excessive to him. Later, Maxine gets a video tape delivered anonymously. It’s a police evidence tape of her doing bad things from the previous movies.
Maxine goes to a special effects place and has a full head cast made; part of her horror movie thing. While she’s waiting for it to dry, she flashes back to old Pearl.
Detectives are called to a crime scene, where two more bodies have been found.
Maxine gets a cryptic note with a phone number, and the man on the line demands that he meet her. John Labat is a private detective, hired to find her. He brings up the names of dead people from the first film. He hands her an invitation to a party; she’s being blackmailed, or at least it looks like it. As she goes home, the two detectives question her about Amber and Tabby, two of her colleagues who were murdered.
Maxine talks to Elizabeth, the director of her new movie, The Puritan II, and they talk about Hollywood and the “Moral Majority.” They drive to the set of “Psycho” and she hallucinates Pearl up in the window of the iconic house. There are religious people protesting the film, saying “Horror is not art” and stuff about Satanists. Soon after, she beats the crap out of Labat the PI.
Maxine goes to see Teddy, her agent and lawyer, and tells him her secret. We see that Labat and the serial killer are working together when Maxine’s video-store friend is murdered. The detectives want to know how Maxine is tied up in all this.
Later, Labat chases Maxine all over some famous movie sets, ending up back in the Psycho house. That night, she gets her friends to gang up on Labat, who later wakes up handcuffed in his car– inside a car crushing machine. He’s not going to be a problem anymore, but no one ever asks who he’s working for.
Maxine decides she’s had enough and goes to that party that Labat had mentioned earlier. The police tail her car. As she goes up to the house, she hears a recording of that video taken of her as a child that we saw earlier. Yes, the killer is her own father, and he’s more than slightly insane. He knocks her out.
She wakes up tied to a tree and surrounded by cultists and cameras. After a long speech, the two detectives storm in, guns drawn. There’s a shootout, and things get carried away. Maxine’s father runs away, up the hill toward the big “Hollywood” sign, but everyone chases him. The detectives are both killed, but Maxine catches up to her father.
The news reports that the Night Stalker has been captured, but he has nothing to do with this story. Maxine later becomes famous for helping in the arrest of her own father, a different serial killer.
“The Puritan II” is a big hit, and Maxine does finally become famous. We flashback to her finally blowing her father’s head off.
A month later, Director Elizabeth talks to Maxine about what’s next. “I just never want it to end,” she says.
Brian’s Commentary
We watched “X” (2022) and “Pearl” (2023) when they came out, and mostly liked both of them. All three of the movies try to do something different; this one tackles life in 1980s Hollywood and ties it in with Satanic panic.
It was well made, especially the “retro” aspects of it. The problem is, I never liked Maxine as a character, not in the first film, and not here. Without caring about the characters, the film was dreadfully dull. And then it drags out with two or three different places where it could have ended but then dragged on.
Bleah.
Kevin’s Commentary
Mia Goth is skilled in the role, but like Brian said, it’s hard to care about the anti-hero Maxine. At one point, we paused, and I exclaimed, “How can there be another half hour left?” It’s on the long side and feels that way. It’s well made in every way but too long and on the dull side through much of it.
Tarot (2024)
● Directed by Spenser Cohen, Anna Halberg
● Written by Spenser Cohen, Anna Halberg, Nicholas Adams
● Stars Harriet Slater, Adain Bradley, Jacob Batalon
● Run Time: 1 Hour, 32 Minutes
● Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
There’s not a lot new here, but it’s well made. And the cards are really cool. The cast is okay, the effects are good - a little too heavy on CGI, and it tells a story. Who, if anyone, will survive and how? Gotta watch to find out. We give it a moderate thumbs-up.
Spoilery Synopsis
A group of friends have rented a mansion, but they’re having a campfire out back. It’s Elise’s birthday. During a game, it comes up that Haley and Grant have broken up. She thinks he’s not ambitious enough, and he thinks he’s too ambitious. They’ve finished their last beer, and there’s a bit of a panic. They find a padlocked cellar and decide they just have to explore it for alcohol. There isn’t any.
The room has a bunch of magic-shop gadgets. Paxton finds a box of Tarot cards, and Haley says she can tell everyone’s future with them. She says it looks like these cards are hand-painted. Haley does readings for Elise, Madeline, Paige, Paxton, and Lucas and gives them all advice (that will probably come in useful later). Only Grant abstains from the readings, but he eventually relents and gets one as well. He thinks she’s making it all up to get him for the breakup. Later, we see the box of tarot cards glow and credits roll.
In the morning, the whole group gets in their cars and goes back to campus. Paxton makes them listen to a podcast for the four-hour drive. Podcasters are sooooo annoying, right? They stop for gas and Lucas wins $700 on a lottery ticket. Was that predicted by the cards?
Elise goes home and finds a ladder up to an attic. Haley had mentioned something about “the ladder of success” in her reading. She climbs the ladder, but success is not what she finds; the High Priestess is up there, and she uses the ladder to apply a “crushing blow” to Elise’s head. Everything Haley said came true, in a twisted way.
The next evening, everyone knows about Elise’s death. Haley tells Paige her backstory, about how her mother died of cancer. That’s when she got into Tarot. Lucas walks alone in the tunnels and sees something dark coming for him. He hides in a restricted area, in an abandoned subway, only… it’s not abandoned, and he gets smushed.
The group decides that the deaths aren’t coincidental, and maybe one of them is the killer. Haley starts to think that the Tarot reading had something to do with it. Still, people do Tarot readings all the time and nothing happens, so that’s a silly idea, right?
They check out the owners of that house she rented. Alma is a discredited occultist and is an expert in horoscopes and tarot. The whole group gets in the car and drives four hours to Alma’s house. Haley described the Tarot deck, and Alma recognizes it by the description.
Back in 1951, the deck killed six people at a wedding. In 1969, eight people died at Woodstock after doing horoscopes. 1988, same thing. Only Alma survived the 1969 readings. “Combining horoscopes and tarot is the most powerful form of divination known to man.”
Back in the 1700s, “The Astrologer” foretold bad things, but she was banished and her daughter murdered. In retaliation, she made a cursed Tarot deck and bound her soul to the cards.
The group drives home, but the car suddenly stops in the center of a long bridge. Madeline recalls her reading, freaks out, and everyone runs down the length of the bridge. Somehow, the Hangman gets Madeline.
They all decide to go back to that house, get the deck, and destroy it. Paxton decides that’s stupid; he wants to go home and barricade himself in his dorm room. The Fool chases Paxton home and catches him in the elevator.
Meanwhile, Grant, Haler, and Paige go to the house and throw the cards in a fire, but they won’t burn. They call Alma to come help, and she wants to turn the deck against The Astrologer. The Astrologer appears in the room and reads Alma’s horoscope. Paige gets separated from the others and meets The Magician. She hides in a big trunk, but The Magician saws it, and her, in half.
Haley thinks that maybe they can beat this thing if they read The Astrologer’s fortune in the cards.
As Grant is knocked out and dragged toward the fires of Hell by the devil, Haley does the Astrologer’s tarot reading. The reading ends with the “Death” card. The wind picks The Astrologer and rips her apart as the cards finally do burn this time.
Paxton comes to pick them up; he didn’t die after all. “How do we know this is all over?”
Brian’s Commentary
The concept is pretty obvious from the title alone. The cards predict bad things about all the characters and they die horrible deaths. This one adds not only strange deaths, but the actual characters on the cards come to life, which is a fun touch. The story is well told, especially when they talk to old Alma. On the other hand, a lot of stuff happens in the dark that we can barely see.
It’s listed as a horror-comedy, but other than a few laughs in the first five minutes, the comedy goes away pretty quickly. There’s a lot of CGI here, and it’s not terrible, but it’s overused. None of the characters have any real story other than Haley, and some are downright annoying. It’s all predictable and even a little cliched in most aspects, but for what it is, it’s well made and doesn’t get boring.
Kevin’s Commentary
The lesson I’m getting from movies like this is don’t play around with antique games no matter how cool the designs are. Trivia says they created the deck used for this movie. Since the title is “Tarot,” and they find the cards fairly quickly, it’s not hard at all to guess right away where things are going to go. I found myself looking over the gang, assessing who I thought was going to survive, getting picked off one or two at a time.
It’s well made, and I was entertained, but there wasn’t a lot new here.
Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person (2024)
● Directed by Ariane Louis-Seize
● Written by Christine Doyon, Ariane Louis-Seize
● Stars Sara Montpetit, Felix-Antoine Benard, Steve Laplante
● Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 Minutes
● Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It is a dark comedy at its core, and there are some funny bits, but it’s pretty grim to be considered a comedy. It’s a good horror movie though, and it’s got a unique take on the vampire mythos. We find out right from the beginning that there’s a whole secret vampire subculture with families, scientists, and doctors. We thought it was great.
Spoilery Synopsis
It’s Sasha’s birthday, and her parents and cousin Denise got her a keyboard that she can already play. She’s never touched a piano before, but she knows it. Rico the clown shows up, and only Sasha seems pleased. He’s not funny, but he can do magic tricks. Turns out, the whole family are vampires, and they eat Rico. Sasha’s fangs haven’t come in yet, and she gets upset at the carnage instead of wanting to join in the feeding like she should.
The parents, Aurelien and Georgette, take Sasha to the vampire dentist, but her fangs won’t come in right. She’s traumatized by watching vampire movies. The doctor they see thinks it may be a brain defect; she’s too compassionate. Her father is sure that she’ll grow into it eventually. “I won’t be hunting for all of us for the next 200 years,” insists Sasha’s mother. Credits roll.
Years pass, and teenage Sasha plays piano on the street for donations. She drinks blood out of a transfusion bag with a straw. Her mother wants to take away Sasha’s piano until she eats normally. One night, Sasha is getting set up outside and sees someone on the roof of the bowling alley across the street; Paul is suicidal. Maybe.
Later that night, we see Sasha stalking Paul. He knocks himself out by accident, and it bleeds, which gets Sasha’s teeth growing. She runs home and drinks a bag of blood. Her parents notice the fangs immediately. They want her to go live with Denise, who refuses to feed Sasha the easy way. It’s an intervention to get her feeding like she’s meant to.
Denise picks up some hitchhikers and brings them home for dinner. Sasha won’t play along, so Denise kills them both as Sasha pouts.
Paul has a bad day in gym class, where he kills a bat. He gets in trouble for it afterward. “What if he attacks a student next time?” asks the principal. His mother wants him to go to therapy because of the situation. He’s actually got the dead bat in his backpack.
Sasha and Denise pick up J.P., another meal, and he’s obnoxious. He takes them to his place and points out that his dad’s a light sleeper. Sasha runs away, which distracts Denise in mid feeding. Sasha buys some people-food, which she knows she cannot eat. Then she sees a sign for a suicide support group and goes to a meeting.
The people at the group are pretty messed up, and Paul is there as well. It’s Sasha’s first time, and she’s vague about her situation. They all think she’s being forced to perform sex or something like that. Paul says he’d give up his life for a good cause, and Sasha pays close attention.
Sasha brings Paul home and finds Denise there with J.P., who is not dead and has fangs of his own. Sasha admits that she’s sixty-eight years old; she’s told Paul what she is, and he’s OK with that. After playing a record, she walks him through the biting process. He wants to be bitten, but she’s still very hesitant.
Sasha offers Paul a last wish, and he wants some revenge on Henry, his bully. They go to the bowling alley where Henry works, and Sasha stalks the crowd hungrily. Not only is Henry not there tonight, Paul is put to work. Henry’s at a party, so they go there next, but first they stop at Melissa’s house; she doesn’t like Paul, and he tells her off. The gym teacher and principal also get pranked.
Paul invites Sasha home, and she sees his sad bedroom. He’s ready for “a bite” but his mother comes home early and interrupts. They eventually do go to Henry’s party. Paul walks up to Henry and they make fun of him– until Paul bites him. On the way out, Sasha faints from hunger.
Paul taks Sasha away, cuts himself, and feeds her some of his blood. She admits that she can’t get her fangs up. Henry and his three friends spot them and move in to cause trouble. They start beating on Paul, and Sasha has no choice other than to help him. She’s super strong and the fangs come out. She drains Henry dry and runs his friends off.
Paul gets up and Sasha insists that he leave her alone with the body. Denise walks up and helps dispose of the body, surprised that it’s not Paul.
Meanwhile, Paul goes home and gets cleaned up after his beating. Denise tells Sasha that Paul can’t be allowed to live knowing what he knows, and Sasha whacks her with a shovel. She then picks up Paul, and the two go to a motel to hide.
He asks what her dying wish would be, and she says she wants to see the sun. He wants to leave the country, but she’s not into that. He thinks it’s possible to be a “humanist vampire,” and simply stalk suicidal people, but she’s skeptical. He wants to try. He finally talks Sasha into biting him.
She thinks Paul’s dead. It takes a long while, but Paul eventually partially wakes up. He’s wheezing and struggling for air. She calls her father for help, and the whole family arrives. Do they help him or will they stake him? It turns out Denise has been hiding bags of blood in her coat all along. Between the flask of blood her aunt gives him and the bags, he fully revives.
Some time passes, and we cut to the hospital, where Paul’s mother works. Paul and Sasha show up. Sandrine explains that she has a patient that’s about to die and has said her last goodbyes. It’s like euthanasia when they drain her into a blood bag. Maybe they can make this work…
Brian’s Commentary
Clowns are enough to give anyone PTSD.
So suicidal people have groups like AA? That seems counterproductive, like they could do it as a group or something.
It’s described as a dark comedy, but it’s really not got very much humor other than the basic premise. There are some funny bits, but they are few and far between. Still, it’s well done, and we were entertained throughout.
Kevin’s Commentary
It was nice going into this one blind, and I really enjoyed it. There were some chuckles here and there, but it’s pretty dark and serious overall. The cast is great, the effects are perfect, and the story is very entertaining.
Insidious: Chapter 2 (2013)
● Directed by James Wan
● Written by Leigh Whannell, James Wan
● Stars Patrick Wilson, Rose Byrne, Barbara Hershey
● Run Time: 1 Hour, 46 Minutes
● Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This is more of the same, after things didn’t get as wrapped up as they appeared in the first movie. The writers find a way to continue the troubles. It’s not a favored franchise by either of the Horror Guys, but it’s well made. The cast is good, the effects are good, and if you enjoyed the first one, you’re likely to enjoy this one. It’s very much on the same level as far as quality.
Spoilery Synopsis
It’s 1986 at the Lambert house. Elise arrives and talks to Lorraine; Carl called her because he doesn’t know how to proceed. Young Josh is being followed by something supernatural. There are photos of bad things happening just behind Josh. Elise hypnotizes Josh and asks many questions. She walks through the house looking for the demon, and it cuts her arm. Elise says she can use hypnosis to make Josh forget his powers. Credits roll.
Some time later after the first film, Lorraine talks to the detective. Old Elise has died, and the detective wants to know why. She tells him about little Dalton being in a coma and how Josh went into the dream world to get him back. Elise made it all happen, but she didn’t survive. We get flashbacks, and the detective thinks Josh killed the old woman.
As the police investigate, Josh and the family stay at Grandma Lorraine’s house. After the kids go to bed, Renai hears the piano playing by itself. It’s clear to everyone that their problems aren’t over. Lorraine sees a woman in white wandering around the house.
Elsewhere, Tucker and Specs talk about Elise’s death. They find videotapes from the 1986 incident in her basement. Adult Josh shows up behind the younger version of himself in the video.
In the morning, Dalton tells Renai about seeing dead people last night. Josh is acting weird, completely in denial that anything is happening. Lorraine calls Tucker and Specs and tells them it’s not done.
Renai sees the woman in white too, and then the baby goes missing. Specs and Tucker call in Carl, who remembers the time from 1986. He uses word dice to contact Elise. “Who killed you?” “She did.” This leads them to an old hospital where Lorraine worked way back in the day. She talks about her experiences with a weird old man there who attacked Josh when he was little. The old man killed himself.
Josh is hearing voices that tell him to kill. He tells Renai to ignore the ghosts and they’ll go away.
Lorraine and the guys go to the old dead man’s house, which is boarded up and abandoned. Carl senses many bad things in the house. They see several ghosts, including the “Mother of Death.” They find a secret room that is full of rows and rows of bodies. The old man who died was a serial killer; he dressed like an old woman, “The Bride in Black.”
Lorraine talks to Renai and says the problem isn’t the house or the kids; it’s Josh. When he went to the other world, it wasn’t him who came back. Carl and the ghost guys bring a tranquilizer shot to knock out Josh. Carl asks Josh questions about his experiences, and it’s clear that Josh isn’t himself. Specs and Tucker run inside to help, but Josh knocks them all out.
Carl wakes up in “The Further,” and Josh is there. Josh says that the thing must have killed Carl. They go looking for Elise in the afterlife but instead, Josh gets a vision of what’s been happening at home. There’s a baby-eating demon there, but Elise shows up to drive it away. Elise says Josh needs to use the Bride’s memories to drive her away.
We flashback to 1986, where modern Josh visits the child version of himself. Adult Josh doesn’t remember any of the details of the old woman, but the young one still does. Young Josh shows old Josh, Carl, and Elise to a red door in the basement.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Lorraine and Renai encounter Evil-Josh, who isn’t looking good. In the middle of the resulting fight, Dalton and Foster come home from their friends’ house. We get a flashback to Parker Crane/The Bride being brainwashed by his mother to go by “Marilyn.”
There is much fighting and ghostly chasing around. Elise tells Josh and Carl that it's time to live again, but they have to go now. Dalton shows up in The Further to lead them out.
Josh and Dalton wake up, and Josh says it’s really him now. Renai isn’t convinced right away. He says that it was him playing the piano, but he couldn’t really get back on his own.
It’s all over, so Carl hypnotizes both Josh and Dalton to forget the whole thing, especially how they know how to travel to the afterlife.
Elise’s ghost still hangs around with Tucker and Specs, helping people. She sees something scary, but we don’t see what it is…
Brian’s Commentary
The first film went to great lengths to make it clear that it was not a “haunted house” film, but this one visited several haunted houses.
It looks good and it’s well acted, but there’s just too much of it; it should have been half an hour shorter.
It’s not my favorite franchise, but if you liked the first one, you’ll probably want to see this one as well.
Kevin’s Commentary
It’s really not my favorite franchise, and we saw two of the later films before this one, so I was feeling a little weary of it before I even started. And that’s not how hypnosis works. But I have to admit it’s well made, and adding time in as a factor in play was nice. I agree with Brian that it went on a bit too long. And of course they left it wide open for more sequels at the end.
Indie Film:
Cursed Waters: Creature of Lake Okanagan (2024)
● Directed by Eli Watson
● Stars: Jason Hewlett, John Kirk, Caralee Miller
● Run Time: 1 Hour, 17 Minutes
● Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was another well put together documentary exploration piece about a cryptid that may or may not exist. There is a little actual footage mixed with speculation footage, along with eyewitnesses, experts, and indigenous folks who offer their takes and theories on the creature. This was especially interesting to us because we’d never heard of this lake or creature before.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open with a history lesson about the American settlers and how they took what they wanted, how they wanted, not respecting nature. One man, John MacDougall, crossed the lake with some horses, and something started eating the horses– the demon of the lake. In the 1850s, the story eventually became a myth, but the lake is now a heavily populated area.
Lake Okanagan is in Canada and is a reasonably big tourist area. There are still stories of Ogopogo, the monster of the lake. We meet the three filmmakers who are investigating the creature. There are two major cities, one on each side of the lake, connected by a bridge.
Ogopogo is not a “dinosaur” like Nessie; it’s more of a snakelike “Chinese Dragon” style creature with big horns. The first videos of the beast were taken in 1964 by a man with a handheld camera. For the most part, Ogopogo is looked upon as harmless or at least non-aggressive. Ferries in 1926 were armed against Ogopogo, but it never attacked anyone. In 1872, Susan Allison watched her husband in a boat on the lake, and she saw it out in the waves; she was the first European to see the creature.
One native woman explains Ogopogo is a dimension-walker, a water spirit, not a regular monster. It’s used as a tourist attraction now, heavily commercialized and non-respectful. ‘If you saw something you couldn’t explain in the water, would you tell the media? Ninety-two percent wouldn’t do it.” That’s a very specific number.
Many describe what they saw and how the creature behaves with all the motorboat activity. We watch several blurry film-camera recordings of the monster from years ago. There is some discussion about the lakes of Canada being connected with underwater passages and the sea monsters traveling from lake to lake; many lakes are said to have monsters.
Brian’s Commentary
As with previous Small Town Monsters productions, this one has excellent production values, looks good, and is nicely polished. The drum soundtrack is slightly overpowering when people are trying to talk. The filmmakers speak to various experts and locals about Ogopogo; they’re all interesting. It’s a very scenic place, and it looks like everyone had a good time making the film.
People love their cryptids; I’m not convinced.
Kevin’s Commentary
This organization does good work with its cryptid explorations, and this is another well-put-together piece that flows well and is interesting. I remain especially skeptical this time around, though. It’s a beautiful area that draws many people. That lake is so heavily populated at the shores and so heavily used for fishing and recreation that it seems there should be more clear filming and evidence if there really were giant serpentine creatures living there.
Short Films:
Short Film: The Coldest Caller (2024)
● Directed by Joe Tucker
● Stars Sheila Reid, Noel Byrne, Harry Page
● Run Time: 3:53
● Watch it:
What Happens
Death has a list and an appointment with Mrs. Evan, an old lady who lives alone. She, however, is happy to see Death, as she needs her plumbing repaired. Sometimes, an encounter with Death doesn’t go as planned, and someone is going to have a really bad day.
Commentary
This is super short but also really well done. The acting from the old woman is right where it needs to be, and the guy who plays Death, although he doesn’t say anything, carries it all with his mannerisms. It’s very funny and worth all four minutes of your time!
Short Film: Animus (2024)
● Directed by Raj Kallychurn
● Written by Raj Kallychurn
● Stars Anan Tacouri, Sophie Degrace
● Run Time: 6:05
● Watch it:
What Happens
Harry wakes up to the sound of an old record playing in the next room. He looks… unwell, to say the least. He goes into the next room and finds someone sitting in the rocking chair– no, there’s no one there. Or maybe there is, but either way, Harry unleashes his murderous rage on the person. That kind of thing never ends well.
Commentary
It’s very surreal and weird. Why is Harry so sickly looking as he sleeps? Is he possibly already dead? Who is the woman in the chair? I have many questions.
Still, it looks good, has some interesting special effects, and doesn’t overstay its welcome.
Nice!
Short Film: Para/Noia (2024)
● Directed by Isaac Ruth
● Written by Isaac Ruth
● Stars Isaac Ruth
● Run Time: 4:00
● Watch it:
What Happens
Our main character looks at his phone, debating whether or not to buy a book to help with his agoraphobia. He clicks the button, and suddenly there’s a knock at the door. Then, the doorbell. Then tapping. Finally, he finds a note that tells him, “Don’t open the door.”
He does, eventually, open the door.
Commentary
This is why I always just buy the eBook versions. No demonic entities that way!
There’s no dialogue, just the guy moving around his apartment, but the lighting, the sound, and a few low-key special effects make the story work. This one is all about fear, and it does a good job getting that across. It’s good!
Short Film: Shiny New World (2021)
● Directed by Jan van Gorkum
● Written by Jan van Gorkum
● Stars Patrick Stoof, Gijs Scholten van Aschat, Maarten Prins
● Run Time: 8:00
● Watch it:
What Happens
It’s a corporate training video describing what you should expect on your first day on the job. This job and the coworkers are very unusual, as they operate a very special kind of cleaning service. We focus on Barry, an experienced cleaner, who is going to walk us through one of his typical days.
Commentary
Wow. That was really something!
The prosthetics and creature makeup are extremely well done. The narration, timing, and visuals are excellent. And, of course, it’s all tongue-in-cheek and hilarious as a “training video.”
I would absolutely watch a feature-length version of this.
Contact Info:
– Email: mailto:email@horrorguys.com
– Book Store: https://horrormonthly.com/
– Website: https://www.horrorguys.com
– Subscribe by email:
– Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/horrormovieguys
– Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@BrianSchell
– Threads: https://threads.net/brian_schell
– Twitter: http://twitter.com/HorrorMovieGuys
Maxxxine, Tarot, Insidious Chapter 2, Cursed Waters, and Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person