Horror Weekly
Horror Weekly
Hell Hole, Trap, Hostile Dimensions, Inherit the Witch, and The Deserving
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Hell Hole, Trap, Hostile Dimensions, Inherit the Witch, and The Deserving

Weekly Horror Issue #299

This week, we’ve got five brand-new, just-released films. We’ll start off with two indie films, “Inherit the Witch” and “The Deserving.” Then we’ll switch over to some more mainstream stuff with “Hell Hole,” “Hostile Dimensions,” and “Trap.” Finally, we’ll watch three short films!

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Indie Films:

Inherit the Witch (2024) 

·       Directed by Cradeaux Alexander

·       Written by Cradeaux Alexander

·       Stars Cradeaux Alexander, Rohan Quine, Heather Cairs

·       Run Time: 1 Hour, 25 Minutes

·       Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PjDyQ-IgeU

·       Coming to streaming September 24th

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was a story about witchery, family secrets, and evil that lives a really long time. It starts out in 1984 and flashes forward 30 years, which was 10 years ago. Time flies. The tie-ins between past and present were interesting, and it does have a pretty cool wrap up. Horrorguy Kevin liked it quite a bit and Brian was pretty cool. You’ll have to see for yourself to decide. 

Spoilery Synopsis

It’s 1984, and it’s Jesse and Cory’s 14th birthday party. We watch grainy old footage of the party. A woman there says she’s putting a very special spell on Cory, but Rex isn’t sure if he even believes in that. She takes some of Rex’s blood and then drinks it. For his birthday, she gives Cory something shocking. 

In the present, Rex and Cory are grown up, and they complain about Pamela, who almost married their father. The father has died, and all the weird relatives are coming out for the funeral. No one wants to see Fiona, the sister, but she’s coming anyway. 

We cut to Pamela leading her coven in a ritual back in 1984. It’s all about “living forever.”

Fiona visits Cory at his place. Older Pamela does a spell; she’s still a witch, and Rex assists her with it. They need to finish the spell with Cory and Fiona or Pamela’s going to die. The two of them, along with the Grand Witch, work on setting up a spell. The death of the old family will make her young again. 

We flash back and forth between Cody and Fiona arguing and the witches doing their thing for a long while. When Fiona finally leaves, Rex uses magic to ambush her on the road. He texts a photo of her unconscious body to Cody. Cody calls 911, but old Pamela is the one who answers. 

Weird stuff happens. Fiona wakes up and escapes. Cody’s boyfriend Lars is possessed by Rex. Fiona finds bodies in the basement of her father’s house. Cody goes off into the night looking for Fiona and ends up at his father’s house. Rex confronts Fiona, and they talk about Pamela being “about ready.” 

We flash back to Cody’s parents sacrificing his twin sister Jesse, in a ritual. Cory stabs her to death in the ritual and Pamela’s insistence. 

Rex sends Lars out to kill Cody and Fiona again, and we see that Pamela is behind the whole thing. Cody gets the upper hand with Lars and appears to suck the life right out of him; at the same time, Pamela has a seizure. In the flashback, after the sacrifice, we see that Pamela says Cory is the best of us; his power must be nurtured. Cory and his father kill his mother next, and Cory is very into it all. 

Back in the modern day, Cory remembers that he was the biggest witch all along. Fiona walks up and says that’s why she left the family all those years ago; she was afraid of Cory. Cory uses his magic to “force choke” both Fiona and Rex. 

Cory then goes into the house and stands next to Pamela’s bed, where the old woman is dying. He carries her down to the basement, where all the dead bodies are. The cultists come in chanting and put a crown on Cory. They wake up Fiona, who wasn’t dead after all, and Cory cuts her throat. Pamela sits up, looking much healthier now. Pamela then breaks Cory’s neck. She gets all the power! 

Brian’s Commentary

It’s described as LGBT horror, but other than a few of the actors/characters being obviously gay, that doesn’t really seem to affect the plot in any way. 

The characters are drab and uninteresting from the beginning to the end. The story is something about a witch wanting the inheritance from Cody and Fiona’s dead father, but it’s all very drawn out and talky. The editing is disjointed and the story is a little hard to follow at points. 

It all made sense in the end, more or less, but it wasn’t particularly well made. 

Kevin’s Commentary

It’s a heavy load to direct, write, and carry a major role in a movie. I thought Cradeaux Alexander did a decent job with it. The ending was unexpected, and I liked that. It wasn’t perfect, but I was entertained - which is the basic requirement that I need satisfied.

The Deserving (2024) 

  • Directed by Koka Singh Arora

  • Written by Koka Singh Arora

  • Stars Venkat Sai Gunda, Simone Stadler, Kelsey Stalter

  • Run Time: 1 Hour, 15 Minutes

  • Trailer:

  • Coming to streaming October 1st, 2024

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This had a great setting and a capable cast with good direction. Venkat Sai Gunda was especially impressive being the center of the movie as a mute with zero dialogue. The script was a little disappointing to us, with an element we figured out way too early. The short runtime helps things move briskly though, and we give it an overall thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

Karter Sai opens the door and lets in a model; he’s a photographer, but he doesn’t speak at all, which she finds weird. He hallucinates himself touching her, but then when she reacts in real-life, he stabs her to death with a pencil. Credits roll. 

Karter opens the door and “talks” to the postal worker using sign language. He uses sign language, and she’s used to that. He goes back inside, develops the photos of the dead model, and fixes himself lunch. 

In the morning, he takes a shower, gets dressed, and goes up to the attic, where he puts his head in a noose. He’s planning to kill himself. He puts on the noose and jumps. Suddenly, there’s someone banging on the door downstairs. He struggles to get the noose off before he passes out…

He opens the door and sees Lucy Hill there. She needs some head shots for her portfolio. He grudgingly lets her inside. He assembles his camera equipment slowly and carefully, but then drops it when he sees something horrible for half a second. Lucy comes out of the bathroom and wants a tour of the house. He closes the door before she sees the dead body he has in there. She seems to know all about him and his family and personal life. 

They do the photo shoot, and he gets a glimpse of her as a corpse. Afterward, she makes him tea. As she stirs the tea, he sees it as blood. She asks many personal questions and is a real chatterbox. He barely responds to her yammering. Karter’s father was a killer of some sort, and the newspapers portrayed him badly. He reaches over the table to kill her, and she’s suddenly not there. 

There’s another knock at the door. This is Lucy, and she introduces herself as if she’s never been there before. He slams the door and hides from her, but he keeps seeing ghosts in the house. He calls 911 by text, and the dispatcher is strange. 

Karter has a flashback to his childhood. Then he sees dead women crawling around the house. After a while, he tries to ignore them, but they make it hard. The deal model asks, “Have you killed yourself yet?” He gets up on a chair and puts on another noose, but doesn’t follow through with it.

Lucy reappears, and she’s a bit more straightforward this time. Is she Death? The Devil? They talk about death and suicide. They also talk about his victims; he’s killed more than one woman. He watches one of them die in another flashback. Then he sees himself burying the bodies. Some of the ghosts mention his “Daddy issues.” 

911 calls him back, and they say there’s no one in the house. Except, he is in the house, along with the ghosts. The ghosts throw a noose around his neck and laugh at him. We flash back to Karter strangling his own abusive father to death. 

He calls 911 again and tells them by note that he needs help. The message shows that he’s killed someone. The police soon show up– no, it’s the mail lady again. Lucy shows up and we see that he really has been dead all along. 

Brian’s Commentary

We assumed from the get-go that Karter had actually died in the suicide attempt, and we waited for the film to prove us wrong. Would they go all “Owl Creek” on us, or try something new? No, no, they did not. 

Venkat Sai Gunda, as Karter, is mostly a one-man show here, and he does well, although he has no real dialogue. Simone Stadler, as Lucy, babbled so much I’d have killed her myself, but she played the part well. Later, when she was more malevolent, she stopped being annoying. The ghost makeup is very well done. 

It’s well shot, well lit, and the setting inside the old house works well. The lack of much dialogue makes it feel a lot like an international short film, but it’s not. It does feel like it could have been shorter; the bits with the ghosts and the flashbacks felt about fifteen minutes too much of the same stuff over and over. 

Kevin’s Commentary

When he hangs himself and struggles changing his mind about it, then they cut to him answering the door, we’re supposed to think he successfully saved himself. I didn’t think he successfully saved himself, he was actually dead and didn’t know it. But that predictable element aside, I enjoyed his performance and the movie overall. I’d recommend it.

Hell Hole (2024) 

  • Directed by John Adams, Toby Poser

  • Written by John Adams, Lulu Adams, Toby Poser

  • Stars Olivia Perunicic, Bruno Veljanovski, John Adams

  • Run Time: 1 Hour, 32 Minutes

  • Trailer:

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This was an entertaining creature feature. The set up is familiar, with a group of people trapped in an escalating situation, but it was well done with enough uniqueness to keep it interesting. The mix of CGI and practical effects get the job done, and it’s filmed in a perfect setting. We give it a thumbs up.

Spoilery Synopsis

We’re told that in 1814, in Serbian territory, a group of Napoleon’s troops ran into some trouble. We see a couple of soldiers in the woods take a horse away from a witchy-looking woman. The soldiers then prepare to kill the horse when some strange creature bursts out of the horse and kills the men with its tentacles. Credits roll. 

In the modern day, Emily comes to work at the drill site. John arrives and says that the roads are flooded, so they are all stuck there for a while. John and Emily are Americans, brought here to find oil, but Sofija, the conservation science student, is more interested in biological research in the deep soil. Teddy, Emily’s nephew, is the camp cook, and he makes spicy Indian food too often. Sofija likes Teddy and volunteers to help him cook. 

The drilling commences. Almost immediately, they hit something that releases smelly gasses. The drill comes up with some kind of bloody fleshy material. Then they dig up something else, a body, but then it comes to life and crawls out of the ground, speaking French. All the work stops.

Teddy sorta-kinda knows a few French words, and he tries to talk to the Frenchman. The man has some kind of parasite inside him. Sofija thinks it’s some kind of worm, and she wants a sample. It pokes out of his nose, and then from his ear. 

The man uses hand signals to ask John to kill him. When John refuses, the man gets all tentacly and attacks John. John ends up swallowing the thing as it crawls down his throat. The French man then turns into a dead mummy when the thing leaves him. Emily quickly notices that John smells like the hole. 

John starts acting strangely and Christian confronts him about weirdness. John thinks the parasite is in him, which it is. This all results in a fistfight, and as John loses, the thing kills Christian and then goes back into John. 

Sofija looks at the sample, and it’s all very confusing, something like an octopus. She figures that the parasite has left the dead Frenchman and is in one of them now. 

Danko and Filip, two of the workers, go into the woods to smoke pot and find John disposing of Christian’s body. John explodes, releasing the creature inside, that hops into Danko. Danko explains it all, and he knows it’s inside him. 

The other workers want to kill Danko, but Emily doesn’t want that. Luka gives her one hour to come up with a better plan. 

Teddy notices that the parasite seems to avoid the women of the group. Sofija and Nikolai have examined tissue samples from John, and they explain the creature’s reproductive cycle. Danko needs to wait until the creature is fully mature, and then it’ll leave him. 

Luka returns to kill Danko, and Emily has no choice but to let him take Danko into the woods and kill him. Teddy and Sofija talk about the creature being innocent and not-evil. 

Out in the woods, the group prepares to kill Danko. He warns them to stand way back when they shoot him, but they’re all convinced that it’s some kind of virus, not a monster. They finally shoot him, and he explodes like a tomato. The creature starts picking off the remaining workers, one at a time. 

Emily talks to Nikolai, who says he wishes he had one of those things inside him. The whole group decides to walk through the woods back to town once Luka returns. Nikolai knows it’s in Luka but promises not to say anything. 

Luka admits it to the group and says violence won’t kill the monster. He decides to drown himself in the nearby lake, so the monster won’t explode out of him. It jumps into Nikolai, but Sofija stabs him to death. It tries and fails to crawl into Emily– Teddy is the last man around. 

We cut to Teddy, sitting in a bathtub, waiting for the thing to leave him. 

Brian’s Commentary

The dialogue, in most cases, is delivered as if this was a comedy, but it’s not. A lot of the dialogue is delivered by Serbians, so it’s a little hard to tell their acting abilities. 

It’s essentially a parasite movie, along the lines of “Alien” but done in Serbia instead. It’s low budget, but well made. 

The creature is interesting, and we see enough of it to do the job. The CGI tentacles aren’t great, but the physical prop was pretty cool. 

It’s not great, but we were entertained.

Kevin’s Commentary

They had a great setting for this, and they made the most of it. I thought the cast was fine and the story was effective. It wasn’t “realistic,” but the reactions of the folks seemed like how things might really go in a situation like that. I’d give it a big thumbs up.

Mainstream Film:

2024 Hostile Dimensions

  • Directed by Graham Hughes

  • Written by Graham Hughes

  • Stars Annabel Logan, Joma West, Josie Rogers, Paddy Kondracki

  • Run Time: 1 Hour, 20 Minutes

  • Trailer:

  •  

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

This seemed like a small budget work, but they manage to fit a lot into it. They take an interesting basic idea and make it even more interesting and strange as things go along. The found footage and documentary style of it fit perfectly, and the cast did a nice job with the script. We liked it a lot.

Spoilery Synopsis

We start with some graffiti artists exploring an abandoned building. Emily and Brian find a door, standing all alone, freestanding in the middle of a room. Brian wanders off and then hears Emily scream– that door is now open, but she’s gone. He looks through the door, and the space on the other side is different. Something from the other side grabs him.

Sam and Ash talk about the found footage of Emily’s disappearance. They want to take this story and make a film about it. Ash thinks it’s a stupid idea, but she goes along with it anyway. They start researching Emily, who is well-known in the graffiti circles.

Sam and Ash go to interview Brian, who acts strangely right away. He explains that he has been working on a documentary project and tells them about the door. He suggests they leave “the door” alone. He tells them about nuclear waste disposal and how they are all surrounded by warnings to keep people away. The door may lead to something almost that bad.

The two girls bring the door home to their apartment. They eventually open the door, thinking it’s all just a joke. Inside the door is a mirror. Ash touches the mirror, and it feels weird. Suddenly, Sam’s mother shows up in the reflection, but she isn’t there in reality. They close the door and then reopen it, and a little dog talks to them. They close the door in disbelief.

The two do a brainstorming session to help them figure out what the door actually is. A gateway to other dimensions. “Can we go through the door?”

The next morning, they send a remote-controlled car through the door. The other side of the door is… a restaurant/play area called “Pandamonium.” They go through themselves next and yell for Emily. Ash is nervous, but Sam seems right at home in the place. They follow signs for “Free hugs” to a giant stuffed panda that sprouts tentacles and chases them back to the door.

Back in the apartment, they’re safe again. Late that night, something pounds on the other side of the barricaded door.

In the morning, the two go to see Innis, a professor who talks about alternate realities and quantum physics. He tells them a story, which we see in found footage, of an urban explorer in Mexico who also went missing. He went through a door from a nasty old building into a jungle with balloons growing out of the ground. He’s attacked by a yellow man. Innis calls them “Wolf Doors” and theorizes a whole history of the doors.

Innis comes to the apartment and opens the door while concentrating on whales. They go through to a place with a giant pyramid and flying whales. “If you imagine it, there’s a world that exists.” They all go home and get drunk.

That night, someone comes out of the door. It turns out to be Emily. She says she was in a dark place with things inside. They call Brian, who comes right over– except that Emily immediately recognizes that’s not Brian– the not-Brian pulls out a Taser and drags Ash through the door.

Innis leaves to find the real Brian while Sam and Emily go through the door to a beach with many more doors. One of the doors leads to the talking dog again. Another leads to a ruined city with a giant golden man. They try again, and this time, they find a duplicate version of Emily, sacrificed in a church.

Sam tells Emily about her dead mother and her feelings of helplessness. She resolves to continue the search for Ash. Meanwhile, Innis arrives at Brian’s apartment and finds him not at home, but there is a computer with some video on it. In it, a man builds the door and hides it in the warehouse where the film started. He pushes Emily through the door. Then Innis goes into the basement and finds Brian endlessly falling and entering two openings, and he puts a barrier in the way to block him from falling. Brian explains to Innis, “It doesn’t need doors; it can draw outlines with chalk!”

Sam chases not-Brian through many strange worlds. She eventually tricks him into being captured by the tentacled panda– but not before stealing his chalk. She finds Emily and Ash, but then the not-Brian shows up and gets his god to start destroying the doors. Unfortunately he’s struck by lightning and vanishes too. Ash wants to go home, but Sam says she doesn’t want to go back; she wants to find the perfect world.

Back in the apartment, Ash and Innis try the door again, but now it’s just a door.

Seven months later, Ash reports that Sam is still missing. The police have been searching for her, but she now knows how to make a Wolf Door for themselves.

Ash opens the door and finally has a talk with the little dog, who is really God.

Brian’s Commentary

The cast is small, and the budget looks even smaller. Still, it’s an interesting concept, and it’s done seriously enough that it’s very entertaining. It’s well-paced and never slows down enough to get boring.

It’s very weird, and very cool! 

Kevin’s Commentary

I thought this was pretty awesome. The idea is cool, and I loved what they did with it. It’s fun to think about what kind of world you’d choose if, literally, anything was possible with an infinite number of universes to choose from. The special effects are effective, the cast was good, and I liked the script. It was very entertaining.

2024 Trap

  • Directed by M. Night Shyamalan

  • Written by M. Night Shyamalan

  • Stars Josh Hartnett, Ariel Donoghue, Saleka Shyamalan

  • Run Time: 1 Hour, 45 Minutes

  • Trailer: 

Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone

We went into it blind so we could be surprised by the twists and turns, and as usual with M. Night’s movies, that turned out to be the best way to go in. The cast is good, the story moves well. Saleka Shyamalan, his daughter, really is a singer. We thought this was a good one, and we were entertained.

Spoilery Synopsis

Riley and her father, Cooper, are going to a concert. They arrive early enough to see Lady Raven get out of her bus. As they wait in line, they talk about Riley’s former friends, who are starting to ignore her more and more. As they walk to their seats, Cooper notices lots of security and armed guards.

All the kids are star-struck with teen-idol Lady Raven, but Cooper’s a bit old for this stuff. He has to make a bathroom run, but Riley stays in her seat. He checks his phone and watches a video of a man in chains. He runs into Jody’s mom, who apologizes for her daughter’s treatment of Riley. Meanwhile, lots and lots of police surround the whole arena.

As the show progresses, Cooper doesn’t understand what all the police are there for. On a break, he asks one of the vendors, Jamie, why they’re all there. He says “The Butcher,” a serial killer, is supposed to be here tonight, and the police have set a trap for him. Cooper starts looking a lot more nervous after the conversation– the exits are all blocked off by cops. Cooper has no choice but to take Riley back into the show. As another singer comes up onto the stage through a trapdoor, Cooper suggests to Riley that they go down there and explore. Riley says no, that’s nuts.

Cooper goes back to Jamie for a T-shirt, and he notices how Jamie uses his security card to open the door. Jamie is a “fan” of the Butcher, and he talks about the twelve victims. Jamie likes to talk, and he says way too much about security codes. Cooper uses what he’s learned to sit in on a briefing about the serial killer and even steals a radio.

Cooper watches as the police tackle and arrest someone. He hears Dr. Josephine Grant reporting on the police radio that the person they arrested wasn’t the right man. They have multiple descriptions of the killer, but one matches Cooper. On the radio, Dr. Grant predicts exactly what Cooper is planning, and she’s right. She’s a profiler, and she’s out to get the Butcher. Cooper goes back to the show with Riley.

Cooper talks to a guy who works with Lady Raven and makes up a story about Riley having Leukemia. The man offers to let them meet the star backstage and gets them right past security. Lady Raven invites Riley out onto the stage to dance with her. We cut to Jody and her mom arguing about Riley and Cooper scoping out Dr. Grant. On a quick break, he notices Lady Raven using an inhaler.

The show is over, and Cooper gets permission from the manager to go out the back way. Grant gets on the radio and says the police need to search every adult man in the audience on the way out. She says there are 3,000 men here in this crowd of more than 20,000. Cooper gets to talk to Lady Raven and shows her the video of the man he has chained up at home. “He is going to die in five minutes. I’m the Butcher. I’ll let him go if you drive us out of here in your limousine. Save him or catch me.”

Lady Raven has little choice, and they drive right from the VIP parking. She offers to drive them home, and Riley tells her the address of their home. Lady Raven meets Riley’s mother, Rachel, and her brother, Logan. She talks about her day, including the trap to catch the Butcher and how they knew he would be at the concert. She knows a lot about the famous serial killer, and Cooper gets annoyed that the profilers know so much about him. Then she sits at the piano and plays for them.

Lady Raven gets sneaky and steals Cooper’s phone and locks herself in the bathroom. She calls the prisoner over the security system, but the man doesn’t know where he is. He does have a couple clues. She then gets on social media to ask her followers to find Spencer, and she mentions what she can about where Spencer is.

Lady Raven yells out the door to tell Rachel that her husband is the Butcher. Cooper breaks in, looks at his phone, and sees that Spencer is now gone. He’s done something to Rachel and Riley. He forces Lady Raven into Rachel’s car. He opens the garage door, and his family is standing in the driveway, blocking the exit. Everyone walks to the limo as the SWAT teams show up. Cooper goes back into the house and exits through a hidden tunnel.

Lady Raven is surprised to find that Cooper has replaced her limo driver. The police catch up, but he escapes again. The police take Lady Raven to see Spencer, who has been rescued and is safe.

Dr. Grant offers to get Rachel a safe place to stay, but she doesn’t feel like being around people. Cooper comes in and surprises her. He thinks she is the one who turned him in, and she was right. She planted the evidence that showed the police that he would be at the concert. Before he kills her, she wants to finish Riley’s cake. He talks about his rage and anger toward her, something he’s never felt before.

As he finishes the pie, Cooper notices that he’s been drugged. He hallucinates his evil mother, who did bad things to him. Suddenly, two cops Tase him, but he’s strong and still puts up a fight. They eventually get him in cuffs and lead him to the police car as Riley and Logan return.

As Cooper is taken away, we see that he can pick the lock on the handcuffs (why aren’t there any cops in the truck with him?). He laughs as the ending credits roll.

We get a quick just to Jamie, the concession guy, as he watches the news and learns the identity of the killer. He doesn’t take it well. 

Brian’s Commentary

We went into this blind other than hearing the usual Shyamalan-bashing that all his films seem to get. His daughter, Saleka Shyamalan, sings all the songs, and she’s actually quite good.

We are very quickly led to believe that Cooper is the Butcher, but knowing Shyamalan’s requirement for a twist, we assumed there would be more to it than that. The cops know all about the Butcher, and they know he’s attending the concert, but they don’t have a photo of him, or the story would be a lot shorter. Their plan seemed weak at best. What city even has that many cops?

We were expecting a twist at the end, and there really wasn’t one, which was a surprise in itself. It was good!

Kevin’s Commentary

Before this movie, I didn’t realize that Saleka Shyamalan was a singer, and she does a nice job. This movie has some flaws if you think about it too closely, but overall I thought it was good, and I was entertained. I’d put it in the top half of M. Night’s movies, and worthy of a recommendation.

Short Films:

Short Film: Gnosis (2024) 

  • Directed by Zach Johnson @resemblanceai

  • Written by Zach Johnson

  • Stars (Animated)

  • Run Time: 9:20

  • Watch it:

What Happens

We are told about a discovery in the 22nd century that would allow humans to “pierce the veil” between other dimensions. “We were woefully unprepared for the horrors that awaited us.”

Thirty years prior to that, the scientist records a visit to his lab. He explains this work is going to change everything we know about reality. He calls it an “Astral Lens.” It can capture images from realms other than ours through quantum physics. It does, in fact, change what we know about reality. Then, something goes terribly wrong…

Commentary

Well, that was depressing!

It’s a mix of AI-generated images, live-action actors, and a lot of narration. It looks good, and the story develops at a good pace. It’s told in the style of a narrated “history lesson” rather than an actual story with characters, much like a book or movie’s prologue. The visuals and creature designs are very cool and have a definite Cosmic Horror vibe to them.  

I’m sure it’ll have detractors due to the use of AI, but I suspect this is an early taste of things to come.

Kevin adds that he’s one of those detractors due to the use of AI. AI that is obvious and has a core sameness to it over and over. The visuals are interesting, but it’s just a string of short AI clips strung together to make a story. There might have been one real person in it, and the narrator might have been a real voice. He’s lukewarm on this one. 

Short Film: Night Train (2024) 

  • Directed by A. J. Serrano

  • Written by A. J. Serrano

  • Stars Daniel Girdo, Cairo Zion

  • Run Time: 5 Minutes

  • Watch it: On the festival circuit, no streaming links are available… yet

What Happens

Two boys walk home late at night; they’re gonna be late. They hop the turnstile and run through the subway, but they do manage to get on the train before it’s too late. The older boy mentions that there’s a “ghost station” at the end of the line. There’s said to be an old man there who’s been waiting for the train for a hundred years.

It’s not true… is it? 

Commentary

It’s well shot and well acted; the plot is very clear, and the story makes perfect sense. I doubt I’d be as calm as the younger kid at what happens at the end, but his reaction just adds to the effect.

Very nice!

Short Film: Prom Car 91 (2024) 

  • Directed by Brian F. Otting

  • Written by Brian F. Otting

  • Stars Yuri Lowenthal, McKenna Marmolejo, Michael Lehr

  • Run Time: 11:11

  • Watch it:

What Happens

It’s Prom Night, 1991, and Carrie thinks this is the night she and Donovan are “going to finally do it.” They’ve been dating for years, and it’s finally time. She asks her parents if they want to take a photo of her in her prom dress, but they don’t care. It’s gonna be a great night!

After the dance, the two plan to “do it” in Don’s dad’s minivan. Surprising both of them, the screaming soon starts…

Commentary

“Who are you talking to?”

The moral of the story seems to be, “don’t mess with girls named Carrie on Prom Night,” which is ALWAYS good advice! 

The way Carrie narrates the whole thing and breaks the fourth wall is fun, it’s like we’re in on the action. Since she and Don are voyeurs, why can’t we be too? The note-writing was hilarious, but then the whole thing is, really. Sometimes watching and listening in isn’t as much fun as it sounds. The fight choreography is really quite good and lots of fun to watch.

This one is a winner!


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