There’s a short film on YouTube–in retrospect it never should have been this big of a surprise–called The Horribly Slow Murderer With The Extremely Inefficient Weapon.
And as Jack Cucchiaio finds himself running from his life from the poorly armed maniac, he finds himself in a race against time–an extremely slow race, granted, but a race nonetheless!–to find out the truth behind this killer before the killer can finish his deadly, extremely long term, project.
I about laughed myself stupid watching this. Seriously–these are guys who know their horror movies, because they’re frantically mocking virtually every convention ever involved in a horror movie. Watching this horribly slow murder go down was just hilarious. And yet at the same time, a little creepy. They really knew what they were doing, and so I recommend it openly. The movie itself actually drags on, much like the killing itself.
So does the Screenhead Ten Scale, which knows a laugh when it sees it. Short film or no, this is hilarious stuff and absolutely deserves its eight out of ten.
You know, I’ve seen PLENTY of horror movies focusing on elevators. Black Out, The Shaft, there was even a lot of elevator action figuring into the old Dario Argento title Demons 2. The thought of being stuck in an elevator or falling down an elevator shaft fills more than a few people with cold dread. So it’s not too much of a surprise to see Hellevator, a movie that tries to play on that cold dread.
This time, it’s about what it sounds like–an elevator that goes straight to hell itself. And for one young man, it’s going to be the ride of his afterlife.
It’s an interesting idea, and they did manage to get some clever action movie dialogue in there–for a short film, this is an especially decent idea. The big problem with it, though, is that only occasionally are snippets of dialogue so loud as to be heard. I had my speakers up nice, and the YouTube volume itself on full–which blasts a video I found of Rehab’s Sitting At A Bar just fine.
But aside from that, Hellevator is a nifty concept poorly executed, so you know what the Screenhead Ten Scale’s got in mind: a five out of ten.
You’ve got to hand it to a movie like Sat Nav for putting out one of the strangest concepts I’ve seen lately. But can they follow through? Read on.
What Sat Nav is about is, pretty much, a satellite navigation system. But it’s a badly flawed system–so badly flawed it’s actually evil.And when the evil sat nav sends a group of Halloween party-seekers on their way to a Halloween party at a place they’ve never been before, well, you know all hell’s going to break loose.
On the one hand, yes, it’s a great idea and there are plenty of creepy scenes. But on the other hand, there are plenty of scenes where you can’t see anything because, once again, they’ve filmed at night and they don’t really know how to do it so you can actually see stuff. That and there’s this horrendous sequence at the end that’s way too loud.
So the Screenhead Ten Scale is left to split its decision for a movie that’s got plenty of good for all its bad and give a five out of ten. It’s a great idea, poorly executed.
I really hate to do this to this short film, but the problem is that Ghost Haunt has a SERIOUS problem with it that can’t be overlooked. More on that in a minute.
Basically, this short is all about a guy named Dorje who gets scared by a dragon mask early on in the film, and his buddies make fun of him for it. Dorje, who wants to prove his manhood, announces that he has Gurkha blood (which is actually a pretty big deal in the subcontinent) and will prove his badass blood by any means necessary. Thus, he’s dispatched to a haunted park to hammer a nail and record the evidence on his camera. What he finds in the park, however, is definitely not what he sees coming.
Ghost Haunt is actually pretty fair, if a bit–okay, a LOT–derivative of other movies just like it, but the problem is that whoever ran this movie has not clue one of how to shoot at night. Thus, we’re left with long black stretches of footage in which all you can see is a flashlight bobbing around.
I love that this is actual, honest to goodness foreign film, but for crying out loud, I want to be able to SEE it.
Thus, due to massive technical errors, Ghost Haunt can only scare up a three out of ten on the Screenhead Ten Scale.
So I’ve stumbled onto a big batch of a minor league movement in short film making–a strange kind of psuedo-machinima involving characters from The Sims in short film settings, and today we’ve got The Punishment up for review.
Basically, a bunch of children that look like they were pulled whole and breathing out of Village of the Damned go forth and set fire to things, and people, with their minds. But what happens to these “demon spawn” is more horrible than you can imagine.
Actually, it’s not so much horrible as it is hilarious.
In all honesty though, for a quick two minute shot of movie, it won’t be half bad. It’ll actually be pretty entertaining. Oh, sure, I have no idea where these children came from or how they got to be pyrokinetics, or anything like that, but I know what happened to them in the end and I know it’s pretty funny.
The Screenhead Ten Scale stifles its laughter long enough to hand over a six out of ten for this slightly better than average low budget romp.
We’ve seen lots of underground horror around here–and I mean that literally. We’ve had church basements and cellars and everything else, so it shouldn’t really surprise anyone that today we’re going to the basement!
And for a young man, alone in the house playing Xbox Live after discovering his mother has gone to the store and left him with the simple task of bringing up a roll of Bounty from the basement, that basement is going to be a lot more dangerous than he imagines.
Basically, Basement is one long, rolling fight scene that will take place all over the house. It’s not too bad, as long as you like your horror with a lot of action in it.
Sure, the plot is simplistic, and the action is a bit overdone and there are some serious problems with continuity and engineering (the video will regularly stutter for some reason, the main character runs pretty well on his stabbed leg before remembering his leg was stabbed, and for some reason, the main character will hit his pursuer with the narrow end of a baseball bat.), but otherwise, this sucker’s not half bad.
Frankly, I have seen vastly worse.
The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, gives a nod of respect to two young up and coming filmmaker types and hopes to spur them on by giving them a better than average six out of ten. Not bad, guys. Next time, something with a bit more PLOT, okay?
Sometimes the best–or at least most passable–movies can come from total amateurs. Such will be the case with The Wardrobe Nightmare, an online short film that takes one of the oldest tropes EVER and plays with it a bit.
A young man comes home from being out doing stuff and gets the surprising request to check the wardrobe in the house. A wardrobe is like a closet but built into a small box and set out in the room. He doesn’t find anything in it…but what he doesn’t see will be the death of him.
It’s not bad, this…it’s nothing great, sure, but it’s nothing bad. We’re all familiar with the whole “thing in the closet” concept, so why not take a run at it?
The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this mild and inoffensive horror run a fair-enough five out of ten. Nothing special here, but you won’t regret your two minutes.
You’ve always got to keep an eye on Big Pharma. You never know what they’ll try and sneak by you in the dead of night when you’re not looking
When a widower, suffering clearly from depression, notices a product study for an experimental antidepressant, he thinks it’s exactly what he needs. But as he’ll discover, the side effects are going to be a killer.
First off, what I saw of that list of side effects was actually pretty funny, until it got weird. Like REALLY weird. And the rest of the movie, even though it’ll feature something of a twist ending you’ll probably see coming, is actually plenty creepy for a short film I found on YouTube. In fact, it’s easily one of the best I’ve seen pretty much since I ran the Fewdio slate clear.
The Screenhead Ten Scale, in turn, gives this surprising low-budget chiller a seven out of ten for doing its job and well at that.
I’m all in favor of eye-catching headlines and attention-grabbing titles. I’ve used–or tried to use–my share and then some, but when you title a movie Sadistic Dismemberment, you’d better be swinging some serious meat around, otherwise you’re just pandering.
And in this case, yes, it’s pandering.
Sadistic Dismemberment is pretty much what it says on the box, following a young man around through his day, which mostly consists of getting up, brushing his teeth, eating some cereal and then rummaging around in what looks like his little sister’s closet before he’s caught and sadistically dismembered.
I have to admit, there were plenty of laughs in this one. Even I, a horror buff of decades, am not sure what use a pasta serving spoon, a ladle, and a small dog have in a graphic dismemberment.
Of course, the obvious problems are here. There’s no plot. Forget about understanding things like why the ghost is attacking this poor schlub. There’s plenty of continuity errors–things are almost cut off but never actually done, and will reappear whole in the next shot. The music is all taken directly from video games, and the director has apparently been inspired by a laundry list of Japanese horror films which he thanks in the end.
The Screenhead Ten Scale is always willing to acknowledge effort and thus hands over a straight five out of ten. It definitely made me laugh, but I think I was laughing AT it a lot more than WITH it.
When I see the word “banned” attached to a short film on YouTube, my first reaction is generally one of shock segueing into one of outright scorn. I mean, COME on…banned? Banned from WHERE? It just got on YouTube–it can’t be THAT graphic. When it comes to edgy content YouTube has all the balls of a neutered Rottweiler. As it turned out, where it’s “banned” from is probably best described as “anywhere where good films are shown”.
Basically, it’s the story of a couple young guys out to party and get chicks–standard guy fare–at least until the stuffed monkey shows up on their doorstep. That’s when the murders start.
Just in case you’re wondering, no, you’re not seeing things at two minutes and thirty three seconds. That is an actual HUMAN HAND you see manipulating the monkey. That’s how low-budget this is. They couldn’t afford a black glove to at least make it LOOK like a shadow instead of some guy’s hand.
And yes, this is easily one of the worst short films ever. But I find myself oddly convinced that they MEANT for this to be godawful–so much so, in fact, that it comes back around to hilarious. Because this is hilarious. I spent so much time laughing at this…okay, I spent about six of the eight minutes this film ran laughing at it. It’s a horror riot.
The Screenhead Ten Scale is holding its ribs tightly and, between gasps of laughter, hands over a six out of ten. This movie sucks, but it’s hilarious, so the difference has been split.