This week, we’ve got another full stack of new films. We’ll open with “Attack of the Meth Gator,” then go fishing “Under Paris.” We’ll then “Kill Your Lover” inside “The Abandon,” and finally visit the very weird “Starve Acre.” All of these have been released in 2024.
We’ve also got five fun shorts this week as well.
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Full-Length Films:
Attack of the Meth Gator (2024)
● AKA “Meth Gator”
● Directed by Christopher Ray
● Written by Lauren Pritchard, Joe Roche
● Stars LaRonn Marzett, Ray Acevedo, Vanesa Tamayo
● Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes
● Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This has more silliness and humor than horror, but the elements are there. It’s got a big monster and a decent body count. The gator and a lot of the effects are CGI, but they work well enough. Turn your mind off to logic and science for this one, and you’ll have a good time.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on shots of alligators in the swamp. We cut to drug dealers, Shane and Trig, frantically packing up their stuff as the cops close in. Sheriff Williams botches the bust, and the dealers run for the swamp. With some packs of meth that fall into the water. Shane steps into the swamp as Williams closes in on him. The gator gets him first. He also gets the deputy. Credits roll.
The mayor pays off some gator-hunters to take care of this extra-big gator, but he wants the whole thing done quietly. Sheriff Williams’s son, Dante, now works for the DEA in Tampa, and he comes up for the gator as well. That gator ate a whole duffel bag full of meth. It didn’t die from it, it seemed to get stronger. Dante says the gator might be suffering from psychosis, and it may be looking for a meth lab.
Williams calls Bithlo, who owns a gator farm, and he has found the monster with his drone, but it’s way too big for him to handle, and he knows it after it eats his drone. The mayor’s gator hunters stalk the big guy, but they don’t know when to quit, and it gets them.
Dante goes to see the mayor, who’s throwing a party, and Anna, Dante’s ex, is there as well, which is awkward. Grady, an old friend, is much more enthusiastic about Dante’s return.
Meanwhile, at the meth dealer's place, the men fill up more duffel bags with powder. They’re moving this load out via kayak, and the gator is not far away. It kills them and their girlfriends, chasing one guy up the side of a cell tower, which tips over under the weight. Without that tower, all communication for the island is down.
This gator’s going to have meth-mouth, since Bithlo found a huge tooth. Grady and Anna want to assist in the hunt as deputies. Bithlo too. The mayor says Dante has no jurisdiction here and won’t cancel the Memorial Day celebration. Suddenly, there’s an explosion and they all rush to see what that was.
Trig has checked into Grady’s inn, and the gator breaks right through the wall to get his meth. It swallows him whole. If it keeps eating meth, its teeth and armor will grow, and it’ll be invincible!
Bithlo takes Dante to a bonfire party, and enlists him in a $5000 bet that he can beat Buck, a hillbilly giant, in a slap fight. After a few rounds, Dante wins. Dante wants the location of the main meth lab, and Tucker, the guy who runs the game, agrees to take them.
In order to get to the meth lab, they have to zip-line over the swamp. No, it’s a trick. Tucker stops them part way there and pulls a gun on the other two men, but just then, the gator leaps up and eats him. Meanwhile, the mayor gets drunk and goes hunting as well. The gator eats him and Sheriff Williams and Anna arrive to start blasting, which does nothing.
The good guys develop a plan to kill the meth gator. Grady has an RPG, and that might do the trick. They all head out to the island, which is very remote. They find the underground meth superlab; it’s huge and just full of meth. They find the people who worked there, all dead because the ventilation malfunctioned.
The alligator arrives and there’s lots of shooting. Dante shoots the rocket launcher into the gator, indoors, and it explodes. When the dust settles, the gator is just laying there with no signs of life.
Sheriff Williams and Anna congratulate Dante and the town’s parade commences.
Bithlo wants to go back to the lab and skin the gator. When he touches it, the gator collapses; that was just its skin, which it has shed. It’s downtown now, and it’s far larger. It eats the sheriff and smashes a firetruck with its tail.
Bithlo reminds the others about the fireworks barge; there’s lots of explosives there. Dante takes some meth out to the barge as bait. When the gator attacks, Anna shoots the barge with the RPG and everything explodes.
Anna and Dante kiss. Happy ending, at least for them.
Brian’s Commentary
Supposedly, this was in the works before “Cocaine Bear” came out, but it’s very nearly the exact same plot. It’s got humor, but it’s nowhere near as funny as the bear. This little island has a mayor who won’t shut down the big festivalbecause they need the tourist money? That’s a new one! Oh, and Grady’s bar looks like someone’s living room.
The scene of the gator climbing the cell tower is worth the price of admission alone. Also, just because it’s on meth doesn't make it bulletproof; it’s shot at a thousands times here but never slows down.
The acting is fine for this kind of movie. It’s well shot and looks good. The gator is mostly CGI, but it’s not terrible.
Kevin’s Commentary
Oh, the bad science. It’s a goofy movie, but it was pretty fun. I turned my brain off and enjoyed it.
Under Paris (2024)
● Directed by Xavier Gens
● Written by Yannick Dahan, Maud Heywang, Xavier Gens
● Stars Berenice Bejo, Nassim Lyes, Lea Leviant
● Run Time: 1 Hour, 44 Minutes
● Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was a pretty good movie as far as entertainment value. Just look aside for the bad science and bad choices that people make, causing bad situations to become worse. The cast is good though, the effects are decent enough, and it makes for a fun and gruesome movie with a big body count. We give it a thumbs up. Just don’t nitpick.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on a boat in the north Pacific. The people on the boat are doing a documentary or news report about the huge, miles-wide, floating trash problem. There’s also something about shark evolution to deal with the trash.
Suddenly, the tracking device signals and everyone runs to put wetsuits on. They dive into the trashy water and find a dead whale caught in a net, there’s blood in the water. A whole pack of sharks approaches, including one that is absolutely huge. It’s one that they tagged a few months ago, but it shouldn’t be that big. How is this possible?
The shark attacks and kills all four divers, including Sohpia’s husband. Sophia jumps in to investigate, and it grabs her and pulls her down so deep that her eardrum ruptures. Credits roll.
Three years later, in Paris, some kids go magnet fishing. They pull up an unexploded bomb. They’ve found at least a hundred of the things as they get ready for a triathlon. The police clear the river of magnet fishers and kayakers in preparation for the race.
We cut to Sophia, who is now giving tours at the aquarium. One of the kids asks if her entire crew died in a shark attack, so she quits. Someone from an environmental group comes to her saying they’ve found the killer shark. “Beacon 7” is now in the Seine River near downtown Paris, on the opposite side of the globe from where she was attacked. Sharks can’t survive in freshwater, but maybe pollution has changed that. The woman in charge of the group thinks they can communicate with the shark, which Sophia thinks is ridiculous.
Meanwhile, two women from the environmental group, take a boat out on the river and go diving for that shark. The diver finds a car down there that looks half eaten. She comes up and the police nab her. Sophia, with her tracker, arrives on the scene and sees that the shark was right there.
The police take their boat back to the police station, and Sophia rides her bike to a place where we just saw the policemen talking to a group of homeless, who are now suspiciously all missing. Did it eat the men on land? Maybe they just got too close to the edge.
Adil the cop questions Mika, the diver he arrested, and she knows about the shark. The cops call Sophia; they found a bunch of chewed up bodies. The police chief doesn’t believe there actually is a shark, but Adil does. She rides along on the police boat with her tracker, but most of the cops are still skeptical.
Mika calls back to her associates and tells them to cut the beacon signal, as the police are trying to kill the shark; she’s trying to save the shark. The police divers home in on the shark, but the tracker suddenly stops working. Adil blames Sophia for cutting the signal, but Sophia knows what really happened.
Adil tells the chief to close the locks, but it’s a week until the triathlon, and they can’t do that. What would the mayor say? Adil does some research on Sophia and learns her history. Meanwhile, Mika releases some viral videos that elevate her to full ecoterrorist status. “We will find this shark and set her free!”
Adil wants Sophia to go with him to the mayor, since no one will believe him. The mayor only cares about the triathlon. Sophia warns about the bad PR if the shark starts eating olympic swimmers. The chief puts Sophia in charge, and she tells Adil what they need to do to trap the shark in one of the locks.
Ben, Mika’s assistant, comes to talk to Sophia about Mika’s crazy plan to guide the shark using sonar. She turns on the tracker, which shows that the shark is literally out of the river and in the catacombs under the city.
The police take their boat down into the huge, wet catacombs, where Mika and her people are already assembling. The police barge in and break up the group, but Mika’s already started her sonar device. When the shark arrives, everyone sees the huge fin. And then a smaller fin; the shark has reproduced. This is Lilith the shark’s nest. The shark swallows Mike whole. Everyone freaks out and falls in the water for no reason, and some of them get eaten by baby sharks. They were all on the ledge, but suddenly everyone panics and jumps in the water in what may be the stupidest scene ever filmed. [Mika’s followers had three kayaks outside the chamber, but there must be a hundred splashing, panicking lunatics in this scene.]
Later, at the hospital, Sophia blames herself for everything, but Adil says it’s not her fault. Adil goes back to the nest and finds a dead shark there. Sophia does an autopsy and says it has adapted to freshwater; this shark is barely two months old, and it’s already pregnant. It was born pregnant; this is a whole new species, and they could take over the entire ocean.
The mayor still won’t cancel the triathlon and orders a coverup. Sophia and Adil bond over being survivors of attacks. Still, Sophia has a plan, and Adil gets volunteers from the police force. She wants to lure the sharks back to the nest and then blow it up.
In the city, it’s a major olympic event, and security is everywhere. The military refuses to allow the police boats to do their job, so Adil’s backup is neutralized.
The divers find hundreds and hundreds of baby sharks in the Seine. On the surface, hundreds and hundreds of swimmers jump in the water and start splashing. The big mother shark isn’t there, so they have to wait to spring the trap. Then the big shark reveals itself and eats the explosives expert. The explosives go off and only Sophia, Adil, and the big shark survive.
The sharks head to the olympic swimmers and they start disappearing one at a time, but very quickly. Everyone, the mayor and the press included, sees the sharks as they leap out of the water. The military boats start shooting machine guns at the sharks, but they hit submerged bombs that set off a chain reaction that blows up about half of Paris. There’s a tidal wave caused by the explosions that wash away the mayor and her entourage. There are flooded buildings from the tsunami. All of Paris is underwater now. [What? Really?]
The sharks have conquered Paris. And London. And the closing credits show us that New York, Venice, Tokyo and Bangkok are also going to fall. It’s now the “Planet of the Sharks!”
Brian’s Commentary
The 2024 Paris Olympics really did have swimming events in the Seine, but no sharks were involved.
Almost all the underwater scenes show garbage in the frame; the filmmakers had an obvious message to send about pollution.
Killer shark movies are not known for their intellectual writing, but this one takes the cake for putting people in ridiculous situations, especially that shark nest scene in the catacombs.
How did all of Paris flood just because a few bombs went off in the river? This may be the dumbest movie we’ve ever seen; you have to completely turn off your logic processors for this one. Some movies require a suspension of disbelief, but this one… good grief!
Kevin’s Commentary
That ending though. Where did all that extra water come from? There are many points that I had to not think about it too deeply. It was entertaining though, and I enjoyed watching it.
Kill Your Lover (2023)
● Directed by Alix Austin, Keir Siewert
● Written by Alix Austin, Keir Siewert
● Stars Paige Gilmour, Shane Quigley-Murphy, May Kelly
● Run Time: 1 Hour, 17 Minutes
● Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was an interesting idea, with a relationship gone sour made even worse by actual acid hatred. The script is simple, but well written and realistic, and the direction is skillful with much flashing back and forth between the past and the present, letting us see gradually how things build to the awful climax. Kevin liked it more than Brian.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on a photo of Axel and Dakota as someone rips it off the wall and smashes it. Credits roll.
Dakota practices her “break up” speech with her friend Rose. She thinks Axel won’t really break up with her unless she really makes him hate her; she’s tried before.
We get a flashback to their first date. Axel looks at all of Dakota’s photography work, a montage of her with many various people. Dakota used to be in a band, but now they’re all mostly dead. In the modern day, she laments at how mundane and boring she’s become since then.
Axel comes home from work early, he’s sick and throwing up. He overhears the women talking about the impending breakup. He’s got black veiny things spreading around his torso. “As soon as he starts to get better, I’ll break it off.”
Trying to make up for it, Axel wants sex, right now, but he’s still sick and gross, so Dakota doesn’t enjoy it. She fantasizes about when they first did it and how they got started as a couple. She was really wild and into all kinds of things, but he’s boring, vanilla, and just wants a “normal” relationship. She’s into kink, and he’s not, but tries badly. We see that from early on, the two really aren’t that compatible. Back in the present, the sex isn’t going so well; he pukes all over Dakota.
As she showers, Dakota notices that he’s left bloody marks where he touched her. Before she even finishes, Axel calls for help as he has some kind of seizure. When he touches Dakota, her skin burns. She calls for an ambulance “to come and take him away.”
She flashes back to not liking his choice of decor for the apartment. He doesn’t like her working at the bar, he wants her to get a more respectable job, but she doesn’t want to clean up her hair or cover her piercings. He doesn’t care for her wall of band photos either. She’s naked, kissing someone, or being sexual in all of them, and he doesn’t approve.
The EMTs arrive and see that Axel is mutating into something that has branches all over the walls. “Ricky, I’m gonna need a hand with this,” one EMT tells her partner. Axel is excreting gooey, slimy acid, and that’s what burned Dakota. “It’s just a reaction to something; it’ll clear up,” Axel insists uncooperatively. He refuses to go with the ambulance.
Dakota tells Axel that it’s time to split up. Ricky and Carol, the EMTs, try to calm down Axel. Axel then uses his newfound acid powers to remove Ricky’s face. He pulls off Dakota’s pants, and she sees she has the same black veins. “My germs are your germs,” taunts Axel as he kills Carol, the other EMT. He rips the skull right out of her head.
“I just want you to listen to my side,” he asks Dakota calmly, “So let’s talk this out.” Dakota wakes up handcuffed to a chair. He tells his side of the relationship, and he actually makes a lot of sense. She’s selfish, self-centered, and arrogant, and he’s tired of it. They both complain about the other trying to change who they are.
She turns on him, getting out of the cuffs easily because they are kink play cuffs not real ones. She has acid now too. They fight, but we also get more flashbacks to their previous arguments.
We return to the opening scene, where Dakota pulls the photo down from the wall, smashes it, and carries a sharp piece of glass into the next room. We see that they were even fighting when the photo was taken.
She finally gets to tell Axel her practice “breakup” speech. This results in her stabbing him and pulling out his heart.
Brian’s Commentary
Talk about your messy breakups!
It’s “Romance Horror,” or just how badly a romantic, sexy relationship can go really bad. Or maybe it’s about the horror of learning to compromise or not compromise. It takes a long time before we get to a more standard definition of horror, but it gets there. There’s obviously a lot of body horror involved as well, but that comes after a lot of relationship drama.
The makeup and gore effects are well done and effective here, but otherwise, there’s not much in the way of special effects.
It’s much more of a breakup allegory or metaphor, but it’s told in horror movie terms. I don’t regret watching it, but I also really have a hard time recommending it. It’s a nice idea stretched out for far too long, and it’s still a shorter film.
Kevin’s Commentary
I thought that the length of the film was just about perfect, with the story filling it nicely. The way it went back and forth between past and present was very effective. It’s a relationship break up movie dialed up to eleven with the horror elements added in. I liked it a lot.
The Abandon (2022)
● Directed by Jason Satterlund
● Written by Dwain Worrell
● Stars Jonathan Rosenthal, Tamara Perry, Regis Terencio
● Run Time: 1 Hour, 37 Minutes
● Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
A wounded soldier wakes up trapped in a sealed cube. Jonathan Rosenthal does a noble job carrying the majority of the movie solo, but it’s not enough to save a script that is long and drawn out, with a big idea that doesn’t come through clearly enough. We were mostly bored with it, and wouldn’t recommend it.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on a military invasion of some Iraqi village. It goes badly for the men involved. One man falls and sees something very strange. Credits roll.
Miles Willis wakes up in pain from being shot in the side but is not in the desert anymore; he’s in a big square room. There are no doors or windows, so how will he get out? He uses his medical supplies to patch up his wound, but he’s obviously still in pain. He looks up and sees the word “Abandon” written upside down on the wall. He looks again, and “All” appears.
It suddenly gets very hot, and Miles takes most of his clothes off. It gets hotter and hotter, and he starts screaming in pain until he passes out. After he wakes up, gravity seems to shift, and everything falls to the wall, then the ceiling. Is this room rotating? He’s now standing on what used to be the ceiling, and his canteen is dripping water sideways.
Miles grabs his sat-phone and calls for help. His sat-phone rings, but it’s up on the ceiling now, and he can’t reach it. The temperature changes, and it gets super freezing cold in the room. Gravity shifts again, and Miles grabs the phone. He hits “redial,” and a woman answers. He thinks she’s behind what’s been done to him, but it’s clear that she’s in a similar situation. They argue back and forth for a couple of hours about stuff; I stopped paying attention around this point and browsed Reddit on my phone.
After the interminable phone call ends, gravity picks up and gives Miles a good stretch. Then the walls start literally closing in on him, but he falls and knocks himself out before that finishes.
The woman, Damsey, calls back, and her cell has gotten smaller as well. Are they going to keep shrinking? She says before this happened, she was at Cape Cod; he was in Iraq. Those phones don’t have that kind of range. It always seems as if they are in the same cell, possibly at different times. He gets another call, and some foreign guy babbles before the call drops.
Damsey calls again, and this time, instead of arguing for an hour, they talk about themselves for an hour. There’s an inscription on the wall dated 2007, and she says that’s no big deal, but Miles is from 1991; she’s in 2020. The walls shrink. She says they’re all there at once, but in different spacetimes. He draws an “X” on the wall and she sees it appear. Then she makes a mark, and he sees it.
Miles and Damsey guess that maybe it’s some kind of alien experiment. They start working on an equation that comes from somewhere. As Miles works the problem, someone invisible scratches it all out. Gravity goes wonky again, and this time, it’s powerful to suck the bullet out of Miles’s belly and break the phone.
The lights go out. Miles has a vision of war and carnage. It’s dark and tiny, which reminds Miles of when he was an abused child.
The foreign guy calls back and tells Miles that he has to lose the game. “What happens when a monkey in a cage learns a trick? He goes on display. The dumb monkey keeps his freedom,” or something like that. The room shrinks again down to about coffin-sized.
Damsey calls, and all she wants to know is if Miles was abusive to someone back home. He wasn’t, but he wanted to be abusive, and she thinks all men are pigs, and this has nothing to do with both of them about to be crushed to death, so why are we on about this now?
They work out that something or other with the gravity and equation works out to 1. Mankind united as ONE. That’s what the aliens are afraid of, all they have to do is “push back.” Suddenly, the walls explode, and they can see each other.
Miles wakes in the desert. He gets up and walks back to where people are, but now there’s an alien invasion in progress. And the folks have modern phones and equipment, so he’s not in 1991 where he came from.
So now, humanity is doomed because the aliens know we’re not stupid monkeys and can do math now? What?
Brian’s Commentary
This is horror? Or did they misspell “Snorer?”
Almost the entirety of the film is a phone call between two characters, one of whom we see and one of whom we don’t. We aren’t given any reason to care about either of them. There was just so much talking between these two people that I had a very hard time paying attention, which probably led to me tuning out some important details.
There are obvious similarities between this and “Cube” (1997), except this is even lower budget. It’s just a guy in an empty room. There’s a lot of discussion about an equation, but apparently, Miles gets a bunch of this from one line of Arabic; we don’t know where the equation came from.
It’s far too slow. Some movies are a “slow burn,” but this is boring from the start to the end. It would have made a good ten or fifteen-minute short but not a full-length film. There’s probably a cool sci-fi idea buried in here somewhere, but it’s really just “Phone Call: The Movie.”
On my new list of “Worst Wastes of Time in Horror Films,” this is #2, right after “Skinamarink.”
Kevin’s Commentary
I’m not going to harsh on it as much as Brian, but I didn’t care for it. I wouldn’t put it as number two on my dislike list. I blame the script above all else for the failure. There’s a big idea at the core, but it’s stretched out far too much with way too much talk and the same sort of things happening over and over for too long. Jonathan Rosenthal was actually pretty good carrying the solo work and delivering a realistic reaction to the situation. It just wasn’t a situation that was very interesting and wasn’t explained well enough.
Starve Acre (2024)
● Directed by Daniel Kokotajlo
● Written by Daniel Kokotajlo, Andrew Michael Hurley
● Stars Matt Smith, Morfydd Clark, Arthur Shaw
● Run Time: 1 Hour, 38 Minutes
● Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This is a fine example of folk horror. Quiet and peaceful in a beautiful countryside with dark evils brewing in the background. It’s low on action and heavy on emotion and atmosphere. It was weird and interesting, and we liked it a lot. A big thumbs up from The Horror Guys.
Spoilery Synopsis
We see old-looking houses out in hilly terrain. We cut to Juliette talking to her son Owen, before bedtime. Husband Richard says they don’t get to town often enough as Owen plays with other children. They are at a community party, but there is soon screaming as one of the ponies loses an eye. Owen is there, holding a pointy stick; yeah, he did it. Credits roll.
Richard and Juliette talk to a child psychologist about the incident. They all moved out to the country two years ago, and Owen seemed to be adjusting normally. Juliette reports that “Jack Grey” talks to him in his sleep. This voice in his head provokes Owen to do bad things. Richard knows about “Jack Gray,” a wood sprite that the local mythology talks about. Old Gordon, the groundskeeper, must have talked to Own about that.
Richard and Owen look for fossils in the creek bed. Meanwhile, Juliette confronts Gordon about what Owen’s been learning from him. Later, Richard goes to the university, where he teaches, as Owen passes out at home and is taken to the hospital, where he dies.
After the funeral, Richard throws himself into his anthropology research, digging out in the hills. Going through his late father’s papers, he finds a diary that talks about “a failed summoning.” There are photos and lots of explanations; the old man actually tried to sacrifice his son, Richard, when he was little.
Harrie comes to visit her sister Juliette, but the grieving mother won’t get out of bed. She has a dream of seeing Owen in the house, but then wakes up. They talk about Owen’s apparent mental problems; they both seem to blame each other for Owen’s death.
At the dig, Richard starts to find some old relics and bones. Jules starts sleepwalking out to the dig site. Mrs. Forde, Gordon’s friend, comes for a visit, and the women all talk about meditation. “A simple chant to help me restore the balance,” offers the old lady, and the three of them get right on that while Gordon talks to Richard about “Jack Gray.” Neither meeting goes well.
Richard finds an entire animal skeleton on one of his father’s boxes. He takes it to Stephen at the university to identify it; he says it’s a rabbit or hare, but there’s nothing special about it. When he looks at it again later at home, it’s started to regrow flesh. After some time, he notices the rabbit’s heart is beating. A few days pass, and Richard finds the rabbit running around loose in his room.
Richard enlists Jules’s help to lure the hare out and into a box, where it hisses and growls at them in rage. They carry the box out to the field to release it, but it behaves strangely. It makes both grieving parents feel better, and they have sex for the first time in a long while. Late that night, Richard goes out and visits the cemetery– with a shovel. No, he’s dug down to the roots of an old tree that was said to be mystical.
Harrie reads Richard’s father’s book on sacrificial folklore; there must be three sacrifices to the tree to release the spirit of Dandelion Jack. Stephen comes to visit and admires the old tree roots and how well it’s preserved. Harrie screams; the rabbit attacked her dog and ran inside the house. Jules picks it up and cuddles it; it’s not so vicious after all, right? She puts it in a baby crib. Harrie gets freaked out and goes home.
Outside, Stephen starts yelling “I am here for him!” Jules goes out to the dig and stabs Stephen. On the road, Gordon talks to Harrie about what Dandelion Jack really wants. Jules admits that she let Owen die; Jack wanted it. Jules has started treating the rabbit like a child. Harrie sees how messed up this is, but Jules and Richard both seem fine with their new long-eared child. Outside, Gordon and Mrs. Forde bury Stephen in the field next to the tree. Gordon holds up three fingers: Owen, Stephen, and… Richard looks at Harrie and picks up a hammer.
As Harrie lies on the floor bleeding out, Jules starts breastfeeding the rabbit.
Brian’s Commentary
We went into this one blind, and we were both shocked at Owen’s early demise; we thought the movie was going to be about him. It wasn’t. Once the rabbit appeared, we both had a very good idea where it was going to go, but that’s not what happened. We expected it would go the “Pet Sematary” route, but it went more down the traditional folk horror route instead.
The rabbit is part CGI (I think) and part puppet. It gets pretty weird toward the end, but it takes a long time to get there. There’s no action at all, it’s purely psychological, but it’s good if you like folk horror-type stories.
Kevin’s Commentary
This was an excellent one to go into blind like Brian mentions. It was so cool how it didn’t go where we were expecting, at multiple points. The cast, script, and direction were all great. It’s a slow-moving one, without a whole lot of action, but I really liked it a lot.
Short Films:
Short Film: Conjured Clowns (2024)
● Directed by Keely Jones
● Written by Taylah Sangalli, Keely Jones
● Stars Taylah Sangalli
● Run Time: 9:58
● Watch it:
What Happens
A young woman gets a job at a funeral home. While doing some cleaning, she finds a box of unlabeled ashes. She decides to go out to the park to spread them nicely. It’s a windy day, and she gets a faceful of ashes, and suddenly, she starts seeing creepy clowns. Are they real or is it just dust in her eyes? As the afternoon progresses, she finds out…
Commentary
Those are some creepy clowns! Tahlah Jones, as the main character, is fine, but the rest of the cast are not so great. Still, they get the story across, and the situation is interesting. It’s well shot, sounds good, and is just long enough to tell the story it needs to tell. Nice!
Short Film: Crazy Car (2021)
● Directed by James S. Osborne
● Written by James S. Osborne
● Stars Erin Yvette, Grant Davis, Christopher J. Gannon
● Run Time: 6:53
● Watch it:
What Happens
Katelyn runs inside the house to avoid her abusive boyfriend, but he goes right inside after her, leaving friend Eric to wait in the car. Eric hears the two arguing and laughs; he’s seen it all before. Suddenly, the car starts up, but Eric sees that the keys aren’t in the ignition. The car isn’t laughing…
Commentary
This one is short, at under seven minutes, but it tells us everything we need to know. We see that Katelyn has been dealing with the abusive Jason for a while and that his friends just enable the behavior. If only someone or somethingwas on her side.
It’s very good. It all happens at night, but we can see everything, so the lighting is good. The acting does the job, and the special effects, although minimal, are effective.
Well done!
Short Film: The Life of Death (2016)
● Directed by Marcin Dubiniec
● Written by Marcin Dubiniec
● Stars Adonis Williams, Mirirai Sithole, Jack Hillman, Sicily Rockmore
● Run Time: 6:36
● Watch it:
What Happens
Death walks down the busy streets of New York City, doing his job like everyone else. Suddenly, he’s hit by a car! If this were a normal person, their life would flash before their eyes. But what does Death himself see?
Commentary
This was really well done. There’s no dialogue, but it’s always clear what’s going on and why. I’d call this more “cute” than “horrific,” but it’s here anyway because it’s just that well made.
Short Film: The Quiet Zone (2015)
● Directed by Andrew Ionides
● Written by Andrew Ionides
● Stars Jessica Bayly, Kasey Iliana Sfetsios
● Run Time: 8:41
● Watch it:
What Happens
A woman rides on the subway, trying to get her spreadsheets in order for a report she has to finish by morning. It’s been a long day, and she’s getting frustrated. Some bozo a few seats away starts whistling annoyingly, and they’re clearly seated in the “Quiet Zone” of the train. She tells him to stop, and that’s when her troubles really begin.
Commentary
It’s got all the tropes you’ve seen before of someone being followed at night by a stalker, but they’re all done really well. We don’t know who or what the whistling person is, but they really want people to keep quiet, doesn’t he? The main actress does a good job, although she has very little to say in this. The “man” is suitably weird and supernatural without being too over-the-top. Well done!
Short Film: Shuck (2024)
● Directed by Emerson New
● Written by Emerson New
● Stars Heather Jacques
● Run Time: 5:22
● Watch it:
What Happens
A woman lies in her sickbed, dying. There’s a huge black wolf under her bed who says, “It’s time.” Yes, this wolf is Death.
The woman wakes up in a huge field of grass, with many spirits making their way through a door. The wolf is there watching it all. She decides to run the opposite way, and the wolf pursues her…
Commentary
It’s an interesting mix of animation types. It’s obvious what’s going on all along, although there’s not much “horror” here. Still, if you saw that exact same wolf form in a different story, it could be terrifying. There’s no dialog beyond the wolf saying, “It’s time,” but it’s still a full story.
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Under Paris, Starve Acre, Kill Your Lover, The Abandon, and Attack of the Meth Gator