I am a very devoted enthusiast of horror movies. Recently, I’ve decided to watch more frequently short films in the genre. For several inherent cultural reasons, we never see them with the same regularity we usually see full length features. And I’ve decided to incorporate – or at least try – into my life the habit of seeing short horror movies more frequently. And, to some extent, I’m being successful on this objective. 

I’ve already had done a selection of six short horror movies, that you can verify here. I also explain the pros and cons of seeing this type of film, but it’s never enough to reinforce the arguments. 

For constraints of time (and mostly budget), short horror movies – shorts in general, so to speak – are usually very objective, even if they begin with a sideline or background story. Moreover, if you watch a more extensive short, one that has almost thirty minutes, for example, the story evolves and develops as a cohesive unity, and you really don’t have time to get bored, especially movies that are very concise. On the other hand, there is a negative side: sometimes the movie is exceedingly good, and when you become profoundly involved in the story, the movie ends. 

It’s imperative to disseminate the culture of short movies – in any genre, not just horror – because there are so many incredibly talented people involved in this mostly independent projects – directors, screenwriters, actors –, that unquestionably deserves more exposure. And who really wins is the public, that learns how to appreciate not just an entirely exotic form of art, that is a majestic and marvelously singular form of expression by its own merits, but incorporates into its culture a more vast and wide conjuncture of creative possibilities. It’s interesting to observe how these movies – not just short movies, of course, this also applies to feature films – are incorporating elements of technology, especially social media, to create relevant plots and intriguing premises, showcasing the dark side of digital revolution and virtual progress. On the movies featured below, being home alone is also another common theme.      

Well, here are the movies selected this time. I hope you enjoy!

An interesting cyber horror movie, a young man apparently finds solace for his terrible grief with an online friend. His girlfriend has committed suicide – and the storyline implies that she had executed such an extreme act by his fault – and he is overcome by guilt. When he finally acquires strength to unfriend his dead girlfriend’s profile on social media, that he constantly visits, she suddenly appears on the chat. Then something drastically bizarre starts to happen.  

The story is not entirely original. There are many other movies with the same premise, even shorts. Nevertheless, the movie – almost nine minutes long – presents itself decently, as an involving, cohesive and intriguing narrative.  

A night radio broadcaster – “Late Hour” Tom Bower (played by Brent Black) – expresses on air his disdain for magicians. When the audience starts to call for the show, a magician, or someone posing as one, gets online. That’s when things starts to get inexplicably dark. Written and directed by Faisal Hashmi. 

A girl – that apparently has plausible reasons for not being alone at her house – after a pleasant night, is driven home by her boyfriend. She asks him to stay for the night, but he says he has to take care of his little brother, but they will be together again tomorrow. Later that night, she sends a selfie to her boyfriend, and then he sends a message asking her who was in the back of the picture. She replies writing that she is home alone. Soon the girl verifies the photo, and discovers that she is not as alone as she presumed. And the intruder is not an ordinary assailant, but someone of a far more horrifying nature. The Glitch has an interesting sequence, that is also available on YouTube.

An interesting short whose characters communicate entirely by mobile text messages. Kelly Morris – the main character – is texting with her housemate, when her former boyfriend starts sending messages too, compulsively. He starts to apologize and begs her an opportunity for them to resume their relationship. Then, her housemate informs her that her social media status has changed from single to a “relationship with Todd Powers”. Kelly then assumes that Todd hacked her account, but when she confronts him, he denies categorically that he is the responsible. 

​Todd is persistent and asks to talk to her personally. She refuses and then the doorbell rings, followed by a knock on the door. Kelly doesn’t answer, and Todd again sends new messages, informing Kelly that he has to say something to her, and has to be personally. Kelly then starts to eat a meal her housemate has prepared specially for her. Not too long after, she starts to feel bad and collapses. Despite the plot twist in the end, it’s not that difficult to figure it out the background story right before its conclusion.

A five minutes short, on this movie, a night watchman in his cabin finds a lost and found box, where he gets a laptop. On the laptop, he starts to read the story of a deformed and solitary creature named Larry. Suddenly he sees in the parking lot, next to the only car there something very bizarre, impossible to identify precisely in the dark. When he looks away for a moment because of the flickering light, and then looks back into the parking lot, the figure is no longer there. Assuming that what he had seen was just a hint of his imagination, the lookout resumes reading Larry's story on the laptop.

Frightened by the morbid story and the energy that suddenly goes out, the night watchman sees again the strange creature in the parking lot. Forced to accept that Larry is real and is watching him, he uses the laptop to help him observe the creature, until he loses Larry from sight. When he pulls away the laptop, he sees Larry right in front of him. When the lights return and he sees two customers returning to their car – the only one that remains in the parking lot – he feels alleviated, and begins to wonder if he was somewhat delusional. But to his distress, the horror was just beginning. 

With little less than four minutes, on this interesting short, a man discovers in the most terrible way that he is not as solitary in his home as he thought he was. 

Written, directed and produced by Marc Cartwright, on this short movie – a little less than seven minutes long –, the main character (played by Baker Chase Powell) arrives home, and starts cleaning the mess from a party he had done the night before. Then he showers and dresses a costume for Halloween. Shortly thereafter, when he goes to the kitchen that he had recently cleaned, he notices a bottle of vodka and a plastic cup near the sink. Then he sits in the couch and when he picks up his marijuana, the drug was almost entirely consumed. 

Assuming a friend had visited him when he was in the shower, he calls his friend demanding satisfactions, but his friend doesn’t take the blame. Saying that he had left a bottle of gin in the refrigerator, when he verifies, he sees that there is no bottle at all. In some brief passages of the movie, it is possible to see a dreadful mask in the wall observing the main character. When he sees a mysterious figure reflected in the mirror, he discovers too late a horrifying presence lurking in the dark. 

When her boyfriend leaves for the night shift, a girl (Maika Monroe) has the whole house to herself. Then she starts to wander, and the border between reality and imagination begins to blur. A very interesting psychological horror movie, the story allows the audience to submerge into the deeply surreal universe of the protagonist’s mind, in an attempt to discover what demons she has to confront. 

An old lady (marvelously played by Beatrice Howard) sees someone outside her house, late at night, and frightened, decides to call her son. She was diagnosed with a condition called Charles Bonnet Syndrome, that causes hallucinations. Her son tells her that she is probably seeing something that is not real, but she responds by saying that she used to see “shapes and patterns… this is a person”. Her son assures her that – according to the doctor responsible for her treatment – she can see anything with her condition. She then opens a window and talks to the figure, that does not respond. She tells that to her son, that assures her that probably she is hallucinating, and the individual is not real. After turning off the phone, she looks again at the figure outside, but this time she doesn’t see anything. 

Soon thereafter – when she is in the bathroom –, she starts to hear strange noises. Then someone bangs on the bathroom door. She opens the door, and her wheelchair bumps into a saucer with a cup on the floor. She calls her son again, but only the voicemail responds, so she leaves a message. After a few more moments, she sees the strange figure again, just for him to disappear in a matter of seconds. 

While in her bed, she tries to convince herself that she is only having a delusional experience. She lies down, and turns on the radio. Then the electricity starts to oscillate, and she hears disturbing noises. Then she listens a knock in her door bedroom. Soon after, the door is violently opened, and someone enters the room. For her relief, it’s her son, that became worried and decided to check upon her personally. To comfort his mother, he checks the entire house, including the basement. Unfortunately, while inspecting the basement, he has a terrible surprise. In desperation, the old lady begins to pray. Then she hears a child’s voice, and everything becomes more sinister than the night itself. 

A man eating his dinner alone at home is suddenly disturbed by persistent bangs on his front door. He opens the door, but finds nobody there. Then, an unknown person calls him on his mobile phone, demanding him to look outside from his balcony. When he does, he sees a mysterious unknown figure staring at him. The mobile phone rings again, the mysterious person disappears from sight and the somber voice demands the individual to go outside. 

After grabbing a knife in the kitchen to protect himself, the man goes towards the building corridor, where he sees the hooded figure. In fear, he returns to his apartment, in a moment where the lights fade away. He grabs a flashlight and his mobile rings again. After a brief conversation, the assailant says some words, where becomes implicit that he is seeking some kind of revenge. Unfortunately, for the young victim, his worst nightmares were just beginning.   

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Directed by Elias Benavidez, the movie begins with a boy a little terrified at being alone in the dark of night in his room. So, he goes to his mother’s bed, and lie down by her side. Not wanting to spoil him, she leads him back to his room, and looks under the boy's bed to reassure him that nothing is wrong. She calms him down, leaves a flashlight on the dresser, counsels him to think happy thoughts and kisses him. When she leaves, he hardly feels any better. When her mother awakes in the morning, she finds her son sleeping by her side, on the floor. 

Looking at a portrait, the mother begins to cry, probably grieving for her deceased husband, a navy officer. Meanwhile, her soon keeps drawing pictures of monsters and horrible creatures. She screams with him for using around his neck the military medallions of his father. Nevertheless, she warmly tries to connect with her son by telling him an apparently scary story, that was in fact an opportunist encounter she had with a raccoon, underlining the narrative with the importance of overcoming personal fears. After the end of the story, though, the boy seemed profoundly disappointed. 

At night, after going to sleep, the boy wakes up hours later, deeply disturbed. Hearing some noises, he illuminates his bedroom with the flashlight. The noise persists, and the boy gets even more anxious, and activates traps he had prepared with his toys the day before. When one of the traps apparently had caught something, the boy go to his mother’s room, and calls her desperately. 

His mother becomes angry when she sees the floor wet – as one of the traps involved water –, so she picks up a towel and gives to the boy to dry the floor; then she says there are no monsters in the house, and gets even more disturbed after seeing the medallions of her husband in her son’s bedroom floor. 

In an interesting turn of events, the mother decides to take part on what she assumes to be her son’s game. She puts the medallions around his neck, grabs the flashlight and says to the monster that both are now going after him. Then both act as if they were in a war zone, and the mother acts as very involved in the performance. Then she shouts that the monster is under the bed, and the boy shoots at him with a toy gun. 

After the play, she puts the boy to sleep. When she is about to leave, she hears a strange noise, then something grabs her by the legs, and pulls her under the bed.  

A young man moves to a house where strange things starts to happen, like taps and doors opening completely on their own, for no apparent reason. Despite the common ground premise, some amateur insights, the precarious acting skills of the lead actor and its homemade inferior quality, the movie manages to be a regular incursion into the supernatural subgenre of horror, if you are willing to ignore the fact that this movie is probably the most mediocre on this list. 

A forty-five minutes long British horror film, this short revolves around a group of three children – Max, Jacob and Sarah – attracted to a desert field in the countryside, upon which they have heard sinister rumors from their schoolmates. Finding the stories somewhat too supernatural and hard to believe, they decide to search for accurate information and to confirm the legendary folktales for themselves. Later, they hear from a friendly candy shop owner some terrible first-hand experience stories related to the field. Then they go to a house where a supposed witch lives. When Sarah – the most courageous member of the group – is about to knock on the door, a woman leaves the house and reprimands the children. Then she invites them to enter her residence, and they reluctantly accept. She offers lemonade to them, and they start to talk about the field. She has many cats in the house. Then she tells them a story of her childhood, about when she was a girl, and was near the field with her friends in a certain occasion, when she saw supernatural cat’s eyes projected from the field. From then on, whenever she closes her eyes, she sees those same cat’s eyes staring at her. This testimony somewhat discourages the children to accept the challenge imposed by their colleagues to go into the field. 

When the children leave, they go meet a man – an acquaintance of Sarah – that supposedly had an experience in the field. After persistently asking, he narrates them his personal incursion into the field, becoming a little distressed. Very curious and determined to fulfill the challenge, the children decide to go into the field anyway. The group split and decide to reunite at night. While eating lunch, Jacob, the youngest, tell his mother what he and his friends are planning to do, and his mother forbids him of going there. Later, she tells him a scary story that explains her fear about the location, and Jacob asks her if she has ever done the challenge. Soon thereafter, while trying to sleep, the door of his closet opens, and Jacob sees a pair of eyes staring at him. Then a mysterious creature attacks him, and suddenly he awakes, realizing he just had a nightmare. A little later, he goes on his bicycle to the place where he is supposed to meet Max and Sarah. When the three reunite, they finally go to the field. The first to get close is Max, that, after approaching the fence, returns screaming, though he haven’t saw anything sinister. Then Sarah goes next, and returns crying. She insists Jacob not to go there, but he goes anyway. After approaching the fence, he listens to somber and mysterious noises, and then he sees the cat’s eyes in the midst of a dense fog. Then many hands touch him. At first frightened, Jacob then feels relief, and jumps the fence into the other side. The narrative voiceover leaves implicit that Jacob has disappeared into another dimension, and then we see the other children desperately looking for him. In the aftermath, its early morning, and we see police officers with Sarah and Max, and a rescue team in the field, trying to find Jacob, along with his mother. Then one member of the rescue team finds a sneaker, that presumably belonged to Jacob.  

A man that collects sinister memorabilia runs a paranormal session with a Ouija board along with his best friend. Unbeknownst to them, they have summoned terrible ghostly creatures, that will transform the night into a living nightmare. 

When two women – Charmaine and Kira – discovers an occultist scripture near a wooden cross in the woods, they go to the supposed location where a witch was executed centuries before (as shown in the beginning of the movie). Apparently, the witch somehow managed to took revenge on her executioners. Suddenly, mysterious things starts to happen to both women. The front doors in their respective houses knock, but when they answer, there’s nobody there. Kira inexplicably develops bruises in one leg. Charmaine one night hear voices, before the bed starts moving inexplicably by itself, provoking a dreadful and fearful experience on her. 

As Halloween approaches, both women leaves pumpkins in the forest, near the wooden cross, while returning the book to the same place where they had find it, in the hopes that – whatever spell they had released –, may be dormant again. Suddenly, Kira is killed by the witch, just for Charmaine to wake up, realizing she just had a nightmare. After choosing Halloween costumes in a store hours later, both women start the night preparing a Jack-o'-lantern. After listening to mysterious noises in the house, someone knocks the door, frightening both women. After a violent knock, the door opens by itself. Charmaine closes the front door, then both women seeks refuge inside the house, as the noises increasingly become more atrocious and sinister.  

Soon, Charmaine sees the witch by the window. Kira decides to leave. She goes to her house, and there, bizarre things happen, like doors opening up, and a swarm of insects attacks her. As Halloween approaches, the two friends find each other near the wooden cross in the woods. Charmaine thinks that burning the book will free both from the witch curse, but burning the book proves to be a very difficult task, as all the matches that she lights fade out rapidly. Soon thereafter, both women are severely beaten by the witch. Nonetheless, one of them manages to burn the book. 

Charmaine’s mother sees her face severely beaten, so she demands an explanation. Then she makes a terrible confession to her daughter, revealing that she had known much more about the curse than what anyone could have possibly imagined. Charmaine then goes to Kira’s house, to tell her about the exceedingly complicated nature of the curse. She was a target from the beginning, because the witch wishes to kill all the descendants of the people who murdered her. This should have excluded Kira, since she is not a local, and her ancestors didn’t lived in the community. Positive that they are safe since burning the book, Kira urges them to enjoy Halloween. 

In the Halloween night, the girls go to a party, while Charmaine’s mother stays at home watching horror movies. Then, she hears a knock on the door, but when she answers, there’s nobody there. Then she hears someone whispering, and in the next scene, she lets the plate with candy fall to the ground, just to be viciously attacked by the witch. Then Charmaine tries to call her. Since she doesn’t answer, Charmaine gets worried, and decides to leave the party, to check upon her mother. 

When she arrives home, she finds a lot of Jack-o'-lanterns, and her mother dead. Kira is then taken and killed by the witch. Charmaine sees the witch coming down the stairs, and tries to run away, but the front door is locked. She flees to the living room, but is surprised there by the witch, that is everywhere to be seen. She is then imprisoned in a pentagram, surrounded by pumpkins. The witch then stabs Charmaine with a knife, but even mortally wounded, she manages to escape. Then, in a surprising turn of events, Charmaine reveals herself to be some kind of sorceress, thus successfully subjugating the witch.

A family is packing their belongings to move, ready to leave a house that is apparently haunted. The couple occasionally argues for no coherent reason, and soon the wife suspects that her husband, always in denial, is concealing something from her. All the mysterious noises and shadowy figures that she sees he insists the raccoons are to be blamed, and builds traps to catch the animals, persisting to deny the paranormal phenomena. Conflicts increase as the woman claims she saw something in the basement, and her husband insists on denying it.

As she is troubled by her visions, she decides to investigate, and uncovers evidence of a crime related to Satanism. When she finally confronts her husband, he admits that he has otherworldly visions too. Soon thereafter, ghosts from the past return to torment the couple. 

A reclusive writer, John Stramen (played by David Clarke, in a great performance), wakes up from a nightmare – one where he was in a dark forest, working as a woodsman, when another man points a mysterious shadow close to him – and he goes to his desk to draw the horrifying creature of his dream. The darkness that revolves outside shows that his apprehensions can be more real than his imagination would ever be able to guess.   

The writer lives in relative isolation. When he wakes up in the morning, and walks outside with his dog, he sees that someone has messed up with one of his windows. Minutes later – deeper into the forest –, he sees in a tree the mysterious shadow that appeared in his nightmare, but it disappears as fast as it came. Then he stars to cut trees with an axe, to relax, and later he tells a friend what is happening to him. His restless nights are filled with extreme anxiety, and he always wakes up at dawn waiting for something to happen. In one occasion, someone bangs on the door violently. He goes outside, and sees some figures moving behind the bushes. 

When he pulls out a manuscript from his desk, titled Dark Strings, by Angela Stramen, we speculate that this woman is probably the lady that appears by his side in a portrait that he constantly looks upon, and that his book by the same title was indeed written by her, a work that she dedicated to him. In one single page, there is this picture of a horrible creature, similar to the one he constantly draws. 

Soon thereafter, John burns a doll over a barrel in the forest. Then, someone with a creepy voice starts talking to him. Taking courage, he turns around his head, just to see the abominable and dreadful shadow of his nightmares, that horrendously multiplies. When he turns his eyes again after a few seconds, the creature had disappeared. John lives his days stuck in this uninterrupted cycle of intermittent hauntings. 

In one occasion, confiding his problems to his friend Beth, John says he made a terrible mistake and now he's paying for it. He explained that he “took something from this person”, and used for personal benefits, probably referring to his book, that he plagiarized from his deceased wife. His friend asked “did the person it belong to find out?” to which he responded “she can’t… she’s dead”. 

At night, he wakes up with the noise of his favorite portrait falling into the ground. Then he sees an enormous radiance by the window. He goes outside, and sees that someone has thrown his car into flames. By this point deeply paranoid, John gets suspicious of everybody around him. 

In another night, John wakes up, and misses Baako, his dog. He gets up, sees a lot of paper scattered in the floor, and then searches for his dog, to find only the collar, along with a trail of blood in the grass. He then calls 911, only to hear in the end the voice of his friend in the place of the attendant’s. He sees also the colossal shadowy creature observing him from a distance. Then he sees other shadowy creatures. 

He then enters a shed, and with an axe decides to confront the creatures. He sees there a man hanging from the ceiling. In another lodging, he sees miniature dolls, and hear nefarious steps. He hides behind a staircase, and down the stairs appears two masked men dressed in black. Both call him by name, and one has a female voice. Then John attacks one of them with his axe. Then his friend, Beth, takes off her mask, and tells John that they were just kidding. Then she says that the man John attacked is dead. 

Soon another man appears – a neighbor John had reprimanded earlier –, and John attacks him too, accusing him of having murdered his dog. Beth says that his dog is with her, and his neighbor says they were just trying to help. Beth explains to John that they were trying to help him find inspiration for his next novel. Then the shadowy creatures appear from the upper ceiling, and John loses his temper, screaming with the ghostly creatures. Beth and the other guy doesn’t see anything towards the place John is staring to. Then John starts to cry. 

In the final scene, we see John locked in a mental institution, working in a sequel to Dark Strings. He still listen to the voices and sees the dark creatures. 

An excellent movie directed by Sean van Leijenhorst – that displays perfectly what a profoundly disturbed and guilty conscience can do to a person –, Woods is probably the best movie featured on this list.  

Alistair, a somewhat discreet and reclusive scientist, is working in a secret assignment, apparently serving as a guinea pig for an undercover project. He has a terrible scar on his neck. When talking to a friend in a cafeteria, she gives him the newspaper, saying that his boss is on the news. So he sees a headline informing that Roman Grady (played by notorious actor Daniel Roebuck), a leading figure in the scientific community, responsible for cancer research, is missing. Alistair then gets profoundly disturbed.   

When he goes home, he sees his neighbors agglomerated in front of his residence; one lady says that someone has heard strange noises coming from his basement. When he enters his house, he sees a neighbor fixing his refrigerator, and saying that noises came from downstairs. Alistair says that possums made a nest there, and he will have to call an exterminator to solve the problem, but they doesn’t have to worry about it. Alistair rapidly expels his neighbor, while another one enters unnoticed by the front door, willing to experiment a key she found on the front yard. Apparently, they heard her entering; the neighbor persistently try to make his way into the house, saying that the noise they are hearing certainly isn’t made by possums.

The women experiments the key in the door lock; it matches, but Alistair manages to interrupt her, saying that she cannot go there. Alistair then expels his two neighbors for good. The woman says that she felt like something was calling her. Alistair then calls someone by the phone, but without saying anything, turns off after a few seconds. While resting near the basement, he suddenly has an anxiety attack, and hides himself in the bathroom. Apparently, he is seeking refuge from a dangerous person.  

He rests in the bathtub, and suddenly gets delusional, before recovering reason. In the next moment, he starts talking to his boss, Roman Grady, that says to Alistair that he wants to talk about what he had done to him. Alistair then replies, saying that he had took everything away from him. By the way they talk to each other, it is implied that Alistair had cancer, but was cured. Grady also knows about crimes and felonies committed by Alistair, and demands Alistair to stop saying to everybody how he had ruined him. He says that Alistair took great advantage in being fired, because he associated himself with an obscure organization. Grady continues, saying that people are chasing him to put their hands on what he has on the basement. Then Alistair asks Grady where he had been for the past couple weeks, and Grady responds by saying that he is exactly where Alistair had left him, “buried in the backyard”, leaving implicit the fact that Alistair probably had killed him, and he is delusional again, something that is confirmed in the next scene, as we see Alistair completely alone in the living room. 

Someone then calls Alistair, and says by the phone “its time”, and then he enters the basement. There, he stops in front of a camera, knowing that he is being observed. He see faces being projected in a white screen. Then he enters into a special chamber, and a voice transmitted by a loud speaker starts communicating with him. Meanwhile, his intrusive neighbor enters the house incognito, and she goes directly to the basement. Anticipating this, Alistair surprises her, and kills her with a shovel, after she screamed in panic, for seeing something horrendous off-screen. 

While contemplating an aquarium, Alistair has apparently pleasant reminiscences, that becomes more sinister, when the beautiful woman that is accompanying him gives a severe bite on his neck; so this was the reason behind the bandage that Alistair had on the neck the entire time, as well as the stitches, seen when he removed the bandage. Then Alistair takes off the aquarium a bizarre creature – that appears to be an alien –, with explicit orders of how taking care the little monster, having the obligation of showing him the pictures in the projector every twelve hours. He then starts to act like a father to the nefarious creature. An unknown person, that can be seen from behind, as well as from some other angles, gives orders to Alistair uninterruptedly. He also says that the creature is only the first of its kind, “soon there will be many more”. He also urges Alistair to move, for there will be hunters trying to prey on him and the creature. 

Alistair receives in his home his friend from the cafeteria. He deliberately lets the creature gets out of the cage, to kill the woman. In the final scene, Alistair is seen in his car, leaving the city, with the creature in a little cage, by his side. Beyond the Basement Door was written and directed by Jason Huls.

The movie begins with a woman walking disoriented into a forest. Six months later, a man named Kyle is coordinating a task force to find several people who had mysteriously vanished into the nearby woods, including one friend. Then he presents slides of some people found dead, with a bizarre dark substance within their mouths. They don’t know what it is. As he is speaking, some people begin to leave, until a woman approaches him, and says that a few years ago, she was found in the forest, in the same exact circumstances, with the black substance coming out of her mouth. She gives him a paper with her address, saying that her house is near the forest, and then she leaves. Her name is Mary Grey.  

A few weeks later, Kyle goes to her house in the forest with two more women, his girlfriend Sadie, and electronic technician Rachel, for further investigation. Initially they think no one leaves there, because it is possible to see that there is no furniture in the house, but then Mary appears, and welcomes them. 

She leads them to a corridor, where they start the investigations. The place strangely looks more like an abandoned school than a residence. They rapidly install the equipment, after which Mary starts to behave in a very eccentric pattern. Sadie then sees a mysterious dark figure, that disappears as fast as it came. Soon thereafter, they find strange paraphernalia in a wicket; among the miscellanea, there is a camera with recorded footage. It registered scenes of a team of paranormal enthusiasts, that investigated the same place where they are now, in an earlier occasion.    

Then they find the file of a psychiatric institution, with information about Mary Grey, soon discovering that her real name is Mabel Green. She suffers from several distressful mental conditions, including paranoid schizophrenia. They discover that they are in an abandoned psychiatric facility. Kyle wants to find Mary, but Sadie and Rachel stop him. 

They manage to go outside, but they discover that their vehicle is gone. Entering the building again, they see Mary, and Kyle tries to confront her. She confesses that all his friends died there, and expresses a nefarious, unstable and erratic behavior, taking pride of how haunted the place is. Then she asks them if they don’t want to be part of her collection. 

The trio try to run away. They end up in a run, after which Rachel closes the door, and demands that Sadie and Kyle save themselves. She is immediately killed by the malevolent entity hunting them. Outside, Kyle asks Sadie to save herself. Behind him, the evil entity involves Kyle in a black smoke and kills him; so Sadie becomes the only survivor of the group, running for her life.  

In the forest, Sadie touches a vase, and soon thereafter, the evil entity appears close to her. Nevertheless, the sensitive energy of Kyle – along with the previous victims of the entity – manages to avenge themselves, and kill the malevolent creature. Sadie gets near the evil entity, pulls the mask off, and sees Mary Grey dead. 

Then the story jumps to fifteen years later. Two teenagers are talking, and one of them gets a Ouija board, that she said she found on her mother’s wardrobe, and belonged to her father, or to his friend that disappeared. She then picks up a picture, where it is possible to see Kyle with another man. Then her friend asks if they would use the Ouija board to contact him, a possibility that the girl confirms.   

The girl calls her father. Then they hear a strange noise. Sadie and another woman, the mother of one of the girls, reprimands Sadie for letting the Ouija board accessible to the girls. She picks up her daughter and then leaves. Then the audience realize that the girl in the room is Sadie’s and Kyle’s daughter, and she never managed to know her father. Before Kyle had met his tragic fate, Sadie had confided to Rachel that she was pregnant, and was looking for the right opportunity to tell him, but given the circumstances, she never had the chance.  

In the final scene, the girl goes out of her room in the middle of the night, and sees a vase over a wood structure, similar to the one her mother had encountered in the forest fifteen years before, and touches it. Then, from the dark emerges an evil entity, ready to prey on the girl. 

20 – Downstairs 

A marvelously fantastic movie made by The Boxleitner Brothers, Downstairs is a golden treasure of short horror fiction, and certainly one of the best movies on this list. The plot revolves around security officer Flip Schubbers (played by Sam Boxleitner), who by the beginning of the movie, is calmly reading a book, while doing his shift in a regular condominium. He sees in the computer a note where Rhonda, the security employee from the previous shift, wrote “Don’t go downstairs!” When a psychotic couple goes bother him about the putrid smell of trash coming from the garbage duct, he politely reprimands them for their hypocrisy, as – for what he had observed –, their hygiene and recycling habits in their art studio are incompatible with their demands.  

Some minutes later, the tranquility of the night shift is disturbed when, inexplicably, music comes from a room that is empty, and the door of a storeroom opens by itself. While checking the other rooms, bizarre things starts to happen. Suddenly, Flip hears a terribly dreadful voice, and gets profoundly scared. He then decides to investigate what is going on, and courageously heads towards the direction where the voice came.  

Perceiving a putrid smell coming from downstairs, Flip wants to discover what is causing such a stench, but the door to the subterranean pavement is locked. When he goes away, behind his back a mysterious figure dressed in a hospital apron can be seen passing by, and easily opening the door; Flip turns around, get a glimpse of the figure, and sees the door open. A little frightened, he grabs a flashlight, and goes down to investigate what is going on.  

Down below, the security officer calls for the person he believes he saw upstairs. Disturbed by the dark, Flip gets nervous when he sees a knotted rope hanging from the ceiling. Soon, it is possible to see someone chasing him. Perceiving that someone is after him, Flip runs upstairs, but the door to the first floor strangely closes by itself, and he is unable to open it by the inside. Although he is desperate, he has no other option, but to return to the subterranean. 

Very cautious, he illuminates the darkness with his flashlight. He gets really scared, though, when a children’s toy ball run to his feet. Then a ghostly apparition suddenly comes from behind. The security officer runs away in desperation. After finding a hideout, he hears a girl crying, and illuminates with his flashlight the place from where the sound is coming. Then he sees another ghostly creature, and runs away one more time. Then he sees an enormously dangerous man (played by Lee Boxleitner) lurking in the dark, and again runs away for his life. Flip luckily crossed a gate that he managed to close. But his good fortunes lasts only for a few seconds. Soon he is encircled by three ghostly creatures, and is hanged by one of them. 

In the morning, the artist that bothered Flip in the beginning of the movie with his wife is seen entering the building. He gets a little distressed when he sees the door of his studio opened. Then he has the fright of his life when he comes across a zombie version of Flip. 

​Wagner

Let’s be real. We never see short movies with the regularity that we see feature films. This is a profoundly rooted habit that we have within ourselves, whose paradigm we have to start to deconstruct. Short movies are a dynamic genuine, legitimate and unique form of unquestionable artistry, with its own qualities and merits, that deserves to be recognized, especially in the genre of horror. Since I am exceedingly familiar, I think I can introduce to you the possibilities of cultivating the habit of seeing these movies more frequently, and learn how to appreciate its singular qualities.   

Generally, by virtue of the constraints of time, you will notice that short horror movies do not have a complex storyline. They usually explore a moment, a situation, a terrible and conspicuously sinister incident, upon which the main character – or characters – finds himself at the epicenter of it, having to fight hardly to survive a hazardous, treacherous and abnormal ordeal.  

Well, here I selected six short horror movies, that you may find relatively interesting to watch. When watching it, try to appreciate them for what they are, and avoid comparing this peculiar form of art with feature films, that usually have bigger budgets, are financed by major studios, and do have a more decent quality of production. Most of short movies are independent, so they lack the support that we normally see in mainstream motion pictures. Nevertheless, some of these movies are quite excellent, and do not possess an inferior degree of quality whatsoever. So I think you can easily appreciate most of them; they are, indeed, an excellent and genuine expression of passionate creativity. Of course, they are not perfect, but neither feature films are. 

So, let me invite you to lose – or gain – one hour of your life, opening your artistic perceptions to a more brief form of narrative. I hope you appreciate the selections that I have done, as well as my invitation for you to see this type of movies more frequently. And let me warn you: although this was not premeditated, here you will see a lot of sinister, dangerous and nefarious killer clowns, or at least subtle references to them. I think in the end they truly are – as unexpected and improbable as it might seems –, an authentic and pervasive source of genuine horror. 

On this movie, a young man discovers that crossing a street can be a task way more sinister and horrifying than one might actually think. 

A young man discovers too late that avoiding clowns – besides being an intelligent decision – is always good for your health.  

An exceedingly great short horror movie – in the best tradition of scary clowns –, on this film, an unsuspecting young man is surprised while walking the street at night by this apparently funny and extroverted clown on Halloween. Nevertheless, he acknowledges too late that he should have avoided the company of the mysterious and sinister opportunist that took him by storm. A marvelous sequel is also available on YouTube. You cannot miss these two fantastic short pieces, by anything in the world.  

Stalker – This is a very interesting, clever and involving movie. The plot is centered on a down on his luck young writer, whose literary drafts have been consistently rejected by prospective publishers, and eventually even his agent drops him. When he is drinking at a bar, someone stoles his mobile phone. When he acknowledges that he was robbed, he goes home, and activates the tracker device to locate his cell. The signal points to a garage, where he finds a killer clown mask, which proves to be something exceedingly bizarre, since his rejected manuscript featured a murderer clown. 

Soon, the mysterious person that grabbed his mobile phone sends him videos, first of the writer himself taking the mask in the garage, then of random girls shopping indoors, outdoors, and last, of the writer’s agent, in her own home. Seeing by the signal that the assailant is probably still there, he decides to rescue her, but upon arriving at her apartment, he finds only a note saying that it was too late, attached to a picture of her agent, with her face drawn as a sinister clown. So he goes home, to find another video uploaded, that shows her unconscious in a bathtub, with her hands tied. Then he sees a man in the clown mask, holding a knife. So he decides to call his own cell phone, and it rings inside his own house. When he goes to the bathroom, he sees the mask and the knife in the sink with a note, and her agent lying down in the bathtub. 

Another movie directed by Sheikh Shahnawaz – like Stalker above –, and starring Sam Malley, the same actor that played the writer, on this short film, the protagonist is a young man with an electronic anklet, that droves electric discharges on him whenever he starts to fall asleep. As terrific, fragmented and occasional imagery seems to trouble him in the beginning, especially when he is almost sleeping, when he talks to his roommate, we learn that he doesn’t want to sleep, in order to avoid terrible nightmares, that became recurrent to him. 

Nevertheless, his partner is deeply concerned, as he hasn’t slept in six days, and they start to discuss. His friend calls him a coward, and urges him to confront his problem. As the tension between them escalates, the young man becomes desperate, and starts to lose grip of reality. Soon, he grabs a gun, and starts to have reminiscences about a recent event, where we see him armed, apparently trying to rob someone, that soon we see, is his friend. As his friend – now posing as the victim of a robbery – shows that his empty wallet only had a picture of his daughter, the assailant tries to inspect his victim, in order to search for valuables. Unfortunately, thinking that he had a chance to grab his gun, the victim tries to subdue the thief, but is shot. So, the assailant gets desperate, and soon they are shown one more time talking to each other, in their flat. The robber now seems deeply resentful of what he has done, and reprehends his friend for trying to grab the gun. When he confesses that he is guilty for his friend’s death, it becomes implicit that he was a criminal, and that he killed his victim in a frustrated robbery attempt. So he is seeing frequently this individual that he murdered only as a delusional experience, a natural symptom of his conscience being overcome by guilt. 

This movie begins with a woman, Allison, staring at a medical bill for chemotherapy sessions, in excess of twelve thousand dollars. Then she sees a request for a babysitter job nailed to a pole, whose phone number she grabs. Her boyfriend Philip arrives, and picks her up. While in the car, she calls the number, applying for the job. She is immediately accepted, and given the address where she has to go. Alison and her boyfriend then discuss, as apparently they had agreed to enjoy a special dinner that night, but she forgot. Desperate for money, she is willing to grab whenever jobs are available. They finally arrive to what appears to be a giant mansion. Her boyfriend stops the car, and their discussion escalates, as her boyfriend complains that they are not spending enough time together. Nevertheless, she ignores him, and leaves the car. In the front door, she finds an important message written, where the parents say that they had to leave their house urgently, but she will find everything that she needs inside the house. 
 
Upon entering, she grabs the electronic babysitter device, and soon afterwards locates the baby room, whose name is apparently Rupert. When she is relaxing in the leaving room, doesn’t take too long for her to hear strange noises through the electronic device, so she runs to the baby room. Arriving there, she initially thinks that someone might be in the room, so she cautiously enters, and goes directly to the cradle to verify how the bay is doing, only to see a baby toy, besides the electronic device. When she looks behind her, she sees an enormous man with a white painted face, dressed as a baby, that attacks her. He terrorizes her, and demands that she changes his diapers, then clean him with baby powder, and threatens her not to inflict any harm on him. 
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Feeling exceedingly humiliated, she initially complies with her assailant’s demands. Nevertheless, Alison tries to escape, but he chases and eventually subdues her violently. Meanwhile, her boyfriend calls her to apologize, and leaves a message on her mailbox. Alison subsequently wakes up in a very obscure place, imprisoned by Rupert. He severely reprimands her, and tells her – contemplating a mural full of collages of missing woman reports –, that he had several other “mommies” before. When he threatens her, she explains her situation. If he kills her, her mother, who is sick with cancer, will have nobody to assist her. Rupert then tells her that if she behaves and do everything that pleases him, he will make her time worthwhile. He offers her twelve thousand dollars if she spends the entire night, which is precisely the value of the debt she has with her mother’s chemotherapy. He then demands that she feed him.   

So, when she puts the diner for him – in a very childish pattern – he demands the baboon. When putting the baboon, she feels tempted to strangulate him, but decides to give up this idea, since such a mistake could cost her life. So she starts to feed him. Rupert, behaving as a baby, denies the food. Alison apologizes, but then Rupert reprimands her, saying that she should behave like a mother, as he behaves like an infant. Just because he denies food, something every baby does, this is not an excuse for her to quit, as no mom would let her own child starve. So she plays his game, and even imitates an airplane with the colored spoon, while feeding Rupert. Just like a child, he then spits food on her. 

Then the doorbell rings, and Rupert threatens Alison with a meat hammer. Her boyfriend, though uninvited, enters the house. Alison screams, and then Rupert breaks her foot. Rupert then attacks and kills Philip, smashing his face several times, with the meat hammer. When Rupert return covered in blood, Allison realizes that he had killed her boyfriend, and she screams in panic. 

Allison then begs Rupert not to kill her, saying that she accepts to play Rupert’s twisted game. Rupert, enraged, says that they will, indeed, play a game. Hide and seek. He says that first, she will hide, and then he will find her, and bury her in a place where no one will ever find her. He then starts counting. Alison goes hiding.    

Allison hides below the kitchen table. When Rupert enters the kitchen searching for her, Alison dilacerates Rupert’s Achilles tendon with a knife, making him unable to walk. While trying to grab her, he tore her clothes apart, so he uses a snip of her blouse to improvise a bandage in his foot, while screaming in pain. Then he goes again after her. Soon thereafter, Rupert hears what appears to be Allison crying. When he goes to the direction of the whimpering, he sees only the electronic babysitter device, and, while distracted, Allison hits Rupert in the head with a blunt object. Then she catches Philip’s car keys, and runs outside. Nevertheless, Rupert – despite his injuries –, goes rapidly after her, and eventually grabs and attacks Allison. They fight hard, and Rupert tries to strangulate Allison. 

Allison then manages to grab the car key, that she already had inserted on the door, and sticks into Rupert’s right eye. Then she proceeds to strangulate him with his own baboon, eventually killing him. Exhausted, she falls asleep, and wakes up the next morning, besides Rupert’s corpse. She pulls the car key from Rupert’s eye, and then leaves, in total shock.   

Tremendously sensational and genuinely frightening, Die! Sitter! Die!: Rupert is a very tense, impactful and sinister horror film. Almost half an hour long, probably is the most extensive in this selection that I’ve done. With great acting, a cohesive script and a formidable production, this is certainly one of the best and most genuinely frightening short horror movies that I have seen. Despite the apparently ingenuous premise, the story was well-conceived, and its coherent development has not left any holes in the plotline. 

All these horror movies could be easily made into interesting, dense and promising feature films. With intriguing, genuine and solid premises, each one of these movies – as well as many others – have abundant potential for a complete story. Several great horror movies have started as short films. Good examples are All Hallows' Eve and Terrifier, both by American filmmaker Damien Leone, that were inspired by his shorts, The 9th Circle and the eponymous Terrifier. Terrifier, the feature film version released in 2017, that I pretend to analyze profoundly in an article, in the near future, starring David Howard Thornton as Art the Clown – inspired by the short movie of the same name – is certainly his masterpiece. Probably one of the best killer clown movies ever produced, on this state of the art work, the audience follows a psychopathic and deranged maniac known as Art the Clown terrorizing two young girls, Tara and Dawn (played by Jenna Kanell and Catherine Corcoran, respectively) in a night of fearful brutality and sadism, whose terribly nefarious dark essence only a handful of movies were truly able to capture with rude, realistic and hostile veracity. 

So, short movies are a fundamental form of art by its own rights and merits. Nevertheless, they can inspire good – sometimes even excellent – feature films. And the exponentially genuine, original and creative talents we see in this field of work definitely makes worthwhile watching short movies frequently. It’s always refreshing to discover new talents, and exceedingly inspired filmmakers challenging new horizons. I hope you have enjoyed this experience, as well as the movies that I’ve selected. See you soon in the next list! 

Mandy is a 2018 action-horror movie, directed by Panos Cosmatos, starring Nicolas Cage, 
Andrea Riseborough, Bill Duke, Ned Dennehy, Linus Roache and Richard Brake. With its vintage visual style reminiscent of old school cinema, the movie has a colorful, but at the same time nostalgic mood, that certainly adds a dense element to its intricate and elaborate visual artistry.    

On this film, Nicolas Cage plays Red Miller, a woodman that is happily married with Mandy (Andrea Riseborough), a cashier in a shop on their nearby neighborhood, and a talented artist on her free time. They live a simple lifestyle in relative isolation in the Shadows Mountain region of California, where peace and quietness are part of daily life. On a certain occasion, Mandy crosses the road when an eccentric group of people in a van is passing by. They are members of a bizarre cult, called Children of the New Dawn. Unbeknownst to her, the leader of the cult, a man named Jeremiah (Linus Roache) asks his right-hand man, Brother Swan (Ned Dennehy) to capture her, as he wants to have her. 

Brother Swan, then, goes along with other cult member to fulfil his task. On arriving in a secret place, he makes a devilish arrangement with a nefarious horde of demonic motorcycle maniacs to kidnap Mandy. The group arrives when Mandy and Miller are sleeping, so Miller is easily subdued, and Mandy is successfully captured. On her captivity, she recognizes an old woman from before, who had earlier bought something on her work place, asking her something about the book she was reading. Mandy is then drugged with the venom of a giant wasp, and afterwards, completely hallucinating, is introduced to Jeremiah. In a delirious journey provoked by the substance administered to her, she begins to laugh hysterically, to Jeremiah’s disappointment.   

Miller is also held captive by the malevolent sect, tough outdoor. After her time with Mandy, Jeremiah goes outside with Brother Swan and one of his female servants, and begins to torment Miller psychologically, eventually stabbing him with a dagger. Then they excruciatingly torture him, by burning Mandy alive in front of him, tough she was involved in a giant fabric bag. On watching Mandy completely burn to death, Miller becomes severely distressed, and an irrepressible fury against the members of the sect strongly resonates on him. 

Strangely, after the event, the group goes away, leaving Miller alive. Completely tied in barbed wire, Miller frees himself with extreme difficulty, injuring himself deeply in the process. He then goes to the place where the ashes of Mindy are, and contemplates its remnants, as what has left of her is rapidly dispersed by the wind. Then he goes home, and sees the TV is still on. Miller goes to bed, and collapses on extreme fatigue. He then dreams of Mandy, shown in an animated sequence completely disfigured by the burns. 

He then wakes up, completely disrupted. He goes to the bathroom, and drinks an alcoholic beverage from a bottle he had hidden. He also starts to overflow all his fury. After recovering a little, Miller decides to visit a friend, Caruthers (Bill Duke), to pick up a weapon. He initially says he will go hunting, and tries to disguise his pain, but eventually he crumbles, and tell his friend what happened. Caruthers then tells him that a criminal gang called Black Skulls are the probable culprits behind the atrocity Miller and his wife have suffered, as they have terrorizing some nearby regions of the country for some time. They drive black motorcycles and can be seen only at night. Their main fuel is a very potent form of LSD they used to deliver, as a service to an independent drug lord. Caruthers tells Miller that he saw the gang once, at safe distance, and informs him the location they are most likely to be. 

Miller then displays all his ability as an ironsmith, to create a giant combat axe to fight his nemesis, and afterwards, drives along in search of the gang. In one occasion, Miller manages to shoot one of them with an arrow, after precisely capturing him through the lens of his gun. Rapidly, he stepped into his van, and drove on where his victim had felt on the road to run over him. Nevertheless, the assailant has managed to stay on his knees in the middle of the pavement, and with a gun shot Miller’s van several times, before a fatal collision between the two took place.  

Miller loses his conscience. When he wakes up, he finds himself imprisoned in a very claustrophobic deposit. His right hand is handcuffed to a pipe, while his left hand is nailed to the ground. Soon, he realizes he is being held captive by one of the Black Skulls. His assailant starts to beat him, talking to him in a very grotesque voice. But Miller manages to subdue his aggressor, breaking the pipe that was indeed a little loose, freeing his right hand, and spanking his antagonist with the pipe until he falls into a lateral pit.  

Miller then starts to explore the place where he is, and suddenly realizes it’s a very underground hideout. He sees an assassinated couple in a bed, and then confronts one of the Black Skulls, that was consuming large quantities of drug in a very dark living room. Miller is able to subdue him, but with great difficulty, as this Black Skull in particular is thoroughly truculent, aggressive and bestial. But Miller kills him by slashing his throat with a razor. The TV then is destroyed by a fire shoot, and Miller confronts again the assailant from before, the one he had thrown into the pit. But once again, Miller is successful in subjugating his attacker. Miller then “celebrates” his victory by consuming a large amount of cocaine that was over a table in the living room.  

On further exploration of the place, Miller encounters his axe. He also accidentally experiments the degraded version of LSD the Black Skulls are addicted to, and have a voraciously and intense delusional acid trip. When he leaves to proceed on his vengeance hunting, he shoots another Black Skull with one arrow, in front of a burning car. The Black Skull doesn’t die, though, and the two begin to fight. After some moments, this member of the gang tells Miller that his wife is still burning. This infuriates Miller, who throws his antagonist directly into the flames and then, in a vicious rampage, decapitates him with his axe. Miller then lights a cigar with the fire in the burning head of the assailant. 

He then drives in the dead of night to continue with his revenge plan, until he sees a tower. He then enters a vast laboratory, where a drug lord (Richard Brake) works. He threatens to catch a Luger pistol to defend himself, but hesitates. There is also in the precinct an enormous tiger named Lizzie in a cage. The drug lord pushes up a button, that opens the gate of the cage where Lizzie is confined, and the animal leaves. With his large pupils dilated, the drug lord also seems to be having a drug-related trip. Anticipating the feeling that Miller is desperate to get information about the Children of the New Dawn, the drug lord tells Miller that they may have gone towards the north. 

Miller then leaves his motor vehicle in a cave, and decides to sleep a little. He then have another dream with Mandy, which is a brief animated sequence, where she is naked, and pulling of the heart of a dead monster. Miller then finds the mountainous region that serves as the new headquarters for the members of the Children of the New Dawn.

Miller begins his irrational fury by viciously attacking Brother Swan, who was leaving his vehicle. Upon the aggression he brutally receives, he manages to say that Mandy has “burned brightly”, scorning Miller by asking him “don’t you think?” – Miller then introduces the sharp lower tip of his axe into the mouth of Brother Swan, breaking his jaw. He then pushes his axe more profoundly, brutally injuring and killing him. The younger woman, a member of the cult, was there, accompanying Brother Swan in the van. She silently cries, but Miller does nothing to her.    

Miller then proceeds to kill other members of the cult. He kills the next by throwing his axe directly into his head. Another one was fought in a battle of chainsaws, although Miller’s antagonist had one whose blade was much longer. Miller manages to inflict a profound wound in his opponent, but this fight proves to him thoroughly difficult to be won. Miller then picks up a chain, and manages to throw it out around the neck of his enemy, pushing it and forcing him to fall over one of the chainsaws – who was on –, that completely eviscerates Miller’s antagonist in the process. 

Miller then finally arrives at the satanic pyramid of the cult, and picks up out of curiosity their “holy” scripture. He then walks through the underground tunnels, finally arriving in an antechamber, where he meets the old matriarch of the cult. She begins to talk to him about Jeremiah. Miller’s only reaction is to stare at her coldly. 

Jeremiah is naked, alone with his egocentric godly delusions in a closed room, when the decapitated head of the matriarch is thrown at his direction. Jeremiah says to Miller that he can’t hurt him, as he continues to proclaim that he is a type of god. When Miller attacks him, Jeremiah starts to beg for his life. But after just a few moments, Jeremiah has a change of heart, and begins to insult Miller, saying that it’s him that should knee, and not the contrary. But Miller says to Jeremiah “I am your god now”, and starts to crush his head, until his eyes pops out, and his skull is brutally smashed. Miller then, feeling at least a little redeemed, sets the place on fire.  

Feeling at least partially relieved, Miller let the good memories related to Mandy flow back. He then drives away, with the sensation of mission accomplished. 

While this movie is good entertainment, it’s not a fantastic, exhilarating nor a superb work of art. More or less, it’s basically a typical revenge for love type of story.

The psychedelic features and the more exotic vibe present in the visual elements are an interesting feature, that certainly adds a genuine and interesting quality into the atmosphere of the movie. They are well developed, and used correctly, not overtly exaggerated throughout the whole production, but applied in precise and effective moments, to increase the effect and to transmit to the audience a correspondent sensation about what a specific character was feeling in a precise given moment. But this component, despite it’s cohesive usefulness on various passages of the movie, does not serve as a guarantee concerning the artistic efficiency of the film.  

Don’t get me wrong. Here there is beautiful cinematography, exceedingly dense and poetic visual scenes, artistic elegance, a consistent narrative, but in the end, Mandy is just a little above the average action flick. Like I wrote some lines above, it’s a very good entertainment. If you like generally reasonable action movies with somewhat generic storylines, you will certainly be pleased with this one. Just keep your expectations low. Don’t expect too much out of it. Yes, you will be thrilled by some really amazing, genuine and colorful exotic scenes. This will be your main reward for risking your time to see this really cool hipster piece. The scenes where Jeremiah delivers an esoteric monologue while his face is entirely red, and his facial features constantly shift to look like Mandy’s are certainly a good exemplar of the colorful unusual imagery that sets the tone of this somewhat relatively audacious vengeance story.

In the end, Mandy is not a bad movie. On the contrary, it’s a very good action flick. It serves to prove that, in the end, Hollywood still manages to do some decently good conventional action sequences. But don’t expect too much out of it. Despite decent visuals, and a plausible conjuncture of good ideas, Mandy will hardly exceed your expectations. In just a few weeks, it will be just another Nicolas Cage movie.           


Wagner

Tad Hilgenbrink is an American former actor, that became famous after starring as Matt Stifler in the 2005 movie American Pie Presents Band Camp. Nevertheless, despite being this movie that threw him into the spotlight, the actor originally from Quincy, Illinois, engraved his presence on the screen for starring in two horror films, 2008 Lost Boys: The Tribe and 2009 The Hills Run Red. 

Although I have seen these three movies, it’s the last – The Hills Run Red – that I remember the best, especially for the fact that I have the DVD, and I have seen this movie a dozen times, because I really appreciate it. It’s not a fantastic movie, however, but it’s definitely my type of horror.   

In The Hills Run Red, Hilgenbrink plays Tyler, a young student that is undergoing a personal project. He wants to do a documentary about an obscure horror movie, titled The Hills Run Red, and the director, Wilson Wyler Concannon (played by William Sadler). The film is considered lost, no copies are known to exist and the director apparently disappeared in mysterious circumstances after the movie was released. Tyler is passionate and enthusiastic about his project, and has located Alexa (played by Sophie Monk), the daughter of Concannon, to dive further into a deep investigation. She is a stripper in a club, and he wants to find her, to discover everything he can about the movie and the director, and why both mysteriously vanished. His girlfriend, Serena (played by the gorgeous and fabulous Janet Montgomery) and his friend Lalo (played by Alex Wyndham) join him in the adventure. 

Tyler locates Alexa, and she strips for him. He lets her know that he doesn’t want her services, he just want to ask her some questions, but she tells him that they better pretend, because they are being watched, and she stares at a discreet camera on the ceiling. She whispers to him, to wait for her outside. Upon finishing her shift, both drive to her place. After acknowledging that she is a drug addict, he locks her and forces her to undergo a hazardous, deliberate and stressful period of abstinence, to fully recover from the drugs and its pernicious effects. At first, she goes furious and insane, but after detoxifying, she became more healthy and reasonable. 

By neglecting his girlfriend, Serena becomes lonely. Perceiving her neediness, Lalo advances towards her, and she accepts his advances. They sleep together, and blame Tyler for his omission, as well as his obsession on the documentary. Regardless, both soon join Tyler and Alexa, and the shooting of the documentary begins. Then the group goes towards the small town where the movie was originally filmed.  





​The premise of the movie basically revolves around a dark character called Babyface, a vicious and sadistic killer. After interviewing local hillbillies – that saw some of the original shooting, as well as the movie when it premiered on a local theater –, that seems friendly at first, but afterwards attack them in their bonfire encampment, threatening to sexually violate the girls, Babyface comes from the darkness, and kills the aggressive hillbillies. The four, feeling threatened, untie and escape from Babyface, seeking refugee towards a cabin in the secluded forest.

Eventually, while running away from Babyface, the group split, but all of them become trapped in different places and situations. After Alexa disappears, Tyler enters the cabin to search for her, and finds her almost naked tied up to a bed. But then Babyface attacks again. Alexa then orders Babyface to go after them.
 
Tyler eventually finds a dark room full of film reels, and he recognizes himself in some of them. After being assaulted and beaten, Tyler loses his conscience, and wakes up tied to a chair, just to see Concannon suddenly joining him, after being misinformed by Alexa that her father had been dead for years. Concannon reveals to Tyler that the movie is still being shot to this day, and that all of the original cast were amateur actors. After seeing some footage, Tyler realizes, to his distress, that all the killing done in the movie was real.

Concannon also shows Tyler footage of himself touching Alexa’s breasts, when the two were confined all alone, during the abstinence crisis that Tyler forced Alexa to undergo. It is then implied that – when Tyler first contacted Alexa – she probably told everything to her father, that managed to plant cameras on Alexa’s nightclub and flat, to continue the shooting of his movie with new victims. Alexa acted as a voluntary bait, to attract them to a trap.   

Concannon wants to do some shooting, with the group being a part of his movie. Lalo is also held imprisoned, but is savagely tortured by Alexa – who has revealed herself to be on her father’s side. Nevertheless, Concannon and Alexa never agree upon anything, argue all the time, and he acts increasingly aggressive towards her, which enrages Babyface. Serena manages to run away for a brief period, hiding in a cellar, and submerging into a barrel of blood. Nevertheless, Babyface, suspecting that she was there, hides in the rooftop, and waits for her to leave. When Babyface eventually locates and captures her, Serena, thinking that Babyface – which has a terribly disfigured face, covered with an equally disturbing and abominable baby mask – is mentally handicapped, sings a lullaby for him. He apparently feels calm at first, but then, with an adult voice, coldly tells her that this won’t do to her any good. She eventually realizes that Babyface’s mental condition is normal, that he is a psychopath, and that she can’t persuade him to let her go unharmed, which makes her go hysteric. 

Meanwhile, Alexa proceeds to torture Lalo, and manages to kill him. Concannon and Alexa then argue about the direction the movie should go, and after feeling jealous about her cinematic virtues, Concannon tells Alexa that he is the only talent in the family, and kills her. Babyface becomes enraged, intervenes, and kills Concannon, with Tyler’s encouragement, Before his execution, Concannon reveals a secret, upon which becomes implicit that Babyface may be the offspring of an incestuous relationship between Concannon and his daughter Alexa. 

Babyface and Tyler then starts to fight. Serena tries to intervene, and manages to subdue Babyface, but Alexa – which was only harmed by her father, and not killed – arranges to subjugate both Serena and Tyler. Alexa ties Tyler to a chair in a room full of dead people, leaving him alone to see her version of the movie. Tyler goes insane. Afterwards, it is revealed that Serena is pregnant, and is being held hostage by Alexa. Only recently I saw the DVD extras, and acknowledged that the movie was shot in Bulgaria. 
  

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For me, this is the movie that is the pearl on Tad Hilgenbrink’s career. Another movie that highlighted him in a lead role was 2006 The Curiosity of Chance (but I haven’t seen this one). Apparently, the actor was active in the film industry for about five years only, from 2004 to 2009, participating in thirteen movies in this short period. He was never seen again in any other movies, nor TV shows. He is absent from the screen for almost ten years now. What has happened to him?  

He simply disappeared, like the director Wilson Wyler Concannon, from The Hills Run Red. Having become exasperated with acting, he retired from the spotlight and probably just changed occupations. Why not? This would not have been the first time, many other people have done that. Famous actress Kay Panabaker ended her career in 2012, after eleven years in the industry, to work in zoology. Another notorious actress, the beautiful and talented Leelee Sobieski, ended her career in the same year, 2012, after successful seventeen years in the movie industry. Or he may just be taking a break. Actress Alison Lohman stopped acting in 2009, the same year as Hilgenbrink, but returned briefly in 2015, to stop acting again, in the next year. 

Or – who knows – he could have died, and no one noticed. Who really knows, besides people on his personal circle? It would be good to know, out of curiosity. Nevertheless, his brief career was a highlight for horror movies enthusiasts, and although his legacy is modest in quantity, certainly he compensates on the great dramatic quality of his memorable performances.   



Wagner

Cry of the Banshee is a 1970 American / British horror co-production, starring legendary horror icon Vincent Price. With a history set in 16th-century England during the witch-hunt, the plot tells the story of a malevolent and depraved inquisitor, named Edward Whitman (played by Vincent Price), who exhibits a sardonic, hostile and perfidious behavior, in his obsessive and dehumanizing designation of imprisoning, inquiring, and killing anyone suspected of practicing witchcraft or engaging in pagan rituals. Using the most aggressive tools his malicious and cunning character has at his disposition, such as abuse of authority, coercion, violence and cruelty, Whitman diffuses a reign of fear, affliction, and terror, which expands the ignominious pragmatism of his authority over the inhabitants of the village where the history happens, besides intensifying the hatred that the pagan peasants nourish towards him. 

In a cruel twist, as formidable as it is unusual, Whitman ends up getting what he deserves, when he least expects it. An excellent film, whose definition of genre would best qualify as a historical drama with elements of suspense, than actual horror. Nevertheless, definitions aside, Cry of the Banshee is a magnificent, realistic and interesting movie, where the qualities are plentiful, and the deficiencies are practically nonexistent. With a solid and cohesive script, marvelously elaborated in a dense and panoramic plot that explores a difficult, tense and troubled historical context, the film's excellence is crowned with the magnificent presence and lucid interpretation of Vincent Price, one of the greatest icons of horror films in the history of cinema. Interpreting a malevolent, aggressive, self-absorbed, egocentric character – but to some extent articulate and charismatic – the frivolous density of the plot becomes even more consistent by profusely taking advantage of the three-dimensional nuances of well-crafted characters, who definitely understand the period in which the story presents itself, being cohesively compatible with the situations presented. 

A great period film, which vehemently portrays the aggressive and inhuman domain of the inquisition, Cry of the Banshee is undoubtedly indispensable for anyone who appreciates the classics of the genre.


Wagner

The Disappointments Room is a 2016 American supernatural horror film, starred by Kate Beckinsale and written by Wentworth Miller. Kate Beckinsale plays Dana, a woman who moves with her son and her husband to a new house in the countryside, just to discover a hidden room in the place, that is submerged in the mysteries and secrecies of a dark and turbulent traumatic past. 

When Dana and her family move to a new house in a very small provincial town, initially everything went exactly as they wanted. The happiness, joy and excitement of a new life surrounds them, and, although some rooms in the house are in ruins, in need for serious repairs, the family of three is satisfied, and ready to initiate a new chapter in their lives. 

Nonetheless, everything changes when Dana discovers in the attic a mysterious room, which is locked, and she can’t manage to open the door. When she finally finds the key to the mysterious room, which was above the doorframe, Dana enters what appears to be a very large and abandoned empty space. Stricken by intuitive bad thoughts and feelings, Dana becomes eager to discover the real purpose behind the hidden room, so she goes to the town library, and starts doing a full research. With the help of the elder local librarian, she finally discovers that the hidden room in her house was used by its former residents as a disappointments room: a common habit within wealthy and aristocratic families in the past, they used to hide relatives that had some kind of morbid congenital disease or grotesque physical deformity in a secret place within the household, preventing the isolated family member to have any kind of social interaction. This measure was adopted by the family as a means to avoid social shame or shunning, and the secluded relative had completely denied the possibility to have a normal life. Tormented by visions from past events related to the family that has lived in the house several generations ago, Dana starts to feel the suffering inflicted by a mysterious man on an innocent deformed child, that probably was related to him. The visions achieve a climax, when Dana sees the mysterious man killing the deformed child. Suddenly, she starts to feel that a very unwanted and sinister presence is hidden somewhere within the house, putting herself, her husband and her son’s life in danger.   

The Disappointments Room is a movie very difficult to evaluate precisely, because it’s as good as it is bad, having its share of good moments, in the same amount of bad moments as well. Undoubtedly, the story is intriguing. With potential, and a very promising and interesting premise, the overall plotline eventually falls in several tiresome and predictable genre clichés, and sometimes seems to revolve around literally nothing. With very intrinsic dynamics, the movie alternates between very intense and interesting moments, and scenes where literally nothing happens, finishing in extremely obvious plot devices. Almost everything revolves around Dana – Kate Beckinsale’s character –, with everything created to gravitate around her, or towards her. Nonetheless, several elements of the plot are frozen in a very obvious atmosphere, specially her relation concerning the bad things that had happened in the disappointments room, and the visions she has related to it.

In general, The Disappointments Room can be considered just another ghost movie, with a more intriguing and sophisticated plot, that falls into a generic and predictable storyline. Nevertheless, the major flaw of the movie is the fact that it is too short. The entire movie feels like a large and compelling introduction, and when you think that the movie will finally begin, in fact, it abruptly ends. Conclusively, what you really have in this movie is an interesting beginning with a very peculiar premise. But as the movie progresses, the story eventually falls in a series of clichés and obvious plot devices, that in the end turns the movie into something a little less than a total waste of time.
 
The Disappointments Room ended up as a major disappointment, being scorned by critics and audiences alike. The final product is better described as a very interesting premise, wasted in a very ordinary movie. Don’t get me wrong. It’s not completely terrible. If you are an intelligent and lucid spectator, you certainly manage to absorb some fragments of good art here and there. But generally, it doesn’t worth the time. Actor Wentworth Miller, though, is revealing himself a talented screenwriter. He had also scripted Stoker, a far more decent, somber and clever movie, which was released in 2013, starred by Nicole Kidman and Matthew Goode. Unlike The Disappointments Room, Stoker is totally worthwhile watching it. 


Wagner

Black Water Vampire is a 2014 Found Footage Horror Film, directed by Evan Tramel. Exceedingly interesting, certainly can be regarded as one of the best in the genre. The plot device follows four friends – two girls, a director and a producer, and two guys, a cameramen and a sound engineer – that heads towards the community of Black Water, Washington, to shoot a documentary about four mysterious murders that occurred in the region, all in mysteriously bizarre, but similar circumstances. For the last four decades, four girls had been found murdered – one every ten years, all killed in the winter solstice – in the woods of Black Water. All the four victims have been found with bite marks on the neck, completely drained of blood and with a mysterious symbol drawn in blood on their skin. One man has been imprisoned, found guilty and convicted for these murders, and he was sentenced to death. Believing he is innocent, the girl leading the group and shooting the documentary wants to discover the truth behind the crimes, and to find the one who is really responsible for them.  

Heading towards their destination, first the group interviews one of the detectives that originally investigated one of the murders. Then they stopped at the penitentiary upon which Raymond Banks (Bill Oberst Jr.), the criminal incarcerated for the murders, is serving his sentence. A sinister figure, with prominent scars on his face, he reveals that he became a scapegoat for the crimes, upon discovering what the villagers where really doing in the woods. Telling the group that he has been slowly poisoned throughout the years, in the hopes of dying faster – and he proves his claims by grabbing a portion of his hair, showing that is easily falling off his head – the convicted individual is mysteriously explicit and ambiguous at the same time, about the bizarre events that for so long had been unfolding in the darkness of the woods in Black Water. 

When they arrive at a cabin upon which they had rented to calmly rest, and keep their baggage and equipment, the next day the group is prepared to enter the woods, and start shooting the documentary. In the first day, they seem to be doing fine, as everything seems to be happening according to the plan. But at night, when they are sleeping on the tent, they hear alarming and unidentifiable screams, becoming fearful that their lives might be in danger. When they leave their tent in the morning, they become terrified on seeing painted in what appears to be blood – in front of the tent –, exactly the same mysterious symbol found painted in blood on the victim’s bodies. 

Determined to go on in their search to find the truth, the group becomes lost in the woods. With the help of a map, they try to figure out where they really are, but rapidly the situation deteriorates, and discussions and misunderstandings broke out between them. Feeling something weird is going on, the sound engineer feels an urge to go back, but the cinematographer encourages him to accompany them further. Telling him that they have walked for almost one day and a half, it would not be easy for him to find his way out of the woods. He says that it’s better for all of them to stay together; soon, the documentary will be shot, and everything will be over in a matter of hours. If he starts to feel bad again, they will completely understand and approve his wish to go back. The sound engineer, upon insisting that he could easily find his way out of the woods, agrees to stay with the group.

But very soon, the situation goes bad again. The sound engineer walks away from the rest of the group, and becomes lost. Several hours pass by, but he doesn’t return. Soon afterwards, the other three are struck by despair, as the night falls, and they haven’t found their friend. The cinematographer and the two girls have a discussion about whether it’s better to search for him, or to set up the tent, sleep, and look out after him in the morning. They eventually chose the last option, which is safer, as they really don’t know what dangers may lurk in the dark, and literally their visibility will be severally compromised by the darkness, turning fruitless any attempt to search for their friend and collaborator in the night. 

But this turns out to be the occasion upon which everything falls apart. Deeper into the night, they hear again the same growls they have heard in the previous night, but these time appears to be louder and closer. They are eventually attacked by a bizarre, dreadful and ferocious creature, that eventually captures the girl that is the leader of the group. The other two, the movie cinematographer and the producer manages to escape, but the producer wants to go back to rescue their friend. The cinematographer strongly objects, and the two wander in the forest, in a desperate attempt to avoid the creature.      

Walking until the day breaks, they eventually find their friend, the girl responsible for the movie project, completely naked and disoriented. She has a terrible bite mark on her neck, and seems to be in shock. The cinematographer puts out of his backpack several clothes for dressing her, and they rapidly try to go out of the woods. But as their friend reveals herself to be in a week and fragile condition, they fail to advance in a fast pace. To make matters worse, they wander completely lost and without any notion of their whereabouts, realizing that leaving the woods will be almost impossible. Soon, they realize that their friend, the girl that has been attacked by the creature, is not only week, but she is experiencing a strange sickness too. She says that she feels an unexplainable thing inside her, and on grabbing up her blouse, she shows up her belly, and is clearly possible to see something moving beneath her skin. In a rage of despair fuelled by his survival instinct, the cinematographer screams with the two girls, saying that he will leave them, but after just a few moments, he is surprised and killed by the mysterious creature, at broad daylight. The two girls, shocked by the killing, do their best trying to escape.

As the night falls again, they see the mysterious symbol – the one that appeared in the bodies of the four murdered girls, and that was also drawn at the entrance of their tent – drawn apparently in blood in several trees surrounding them. They manage to encounter a strange and ruined cabin, upon which they hide. But soon the creature locates them, and they are forced to leave the cabin. Soon the girls are outdoors, and they see a lot of the townsfolk people surrounding them, but their hostile faces make pretty obvious that their intention is not to help. The producer tries to escape, but is killed in the process. The only surviving member of the group, the girl attacked by the creature, is thrown in the floor by the group of stalkers, and they strongly hold her into the ground. She soon starts to scream, and appears to be giving birth, as one woman that was part of the group of deranged stalkers, off camera, seems to be doing the work of delivering the baby. 

Soon, one year later, we see a group of people gathering in the dark, inside of a cabin, celebrating with a cake the birthday of one year of a baby. They are all the same community members seen before, that killed the producer girl, and delivered the baby of the girl impregnated by the Black Water creature. We see here the woman that rented the cabin for the group of filmmakers in the beginning of the movie, and we see, with an extremely unhappy face, the girl that wanted to shot the documentary, the only surviving member of the fatal ordeal that victimized her three friends. She was impregnated by the mysterious creature, with the blessing and the collusion of the townspeople, and apparently, is now a member of their community. The film ends showing the hybrid baby creature, half-human and half-monster.

For a found footage film, Black Water Vampire is simply amazing. Doing the best to avoid and to escape the clichés of the genre, this is a serious work, with a truly genuine and unexpected cinematic feeling. One of the best movies of the genre that I have seen, Black Water Vampire is filled by an atrocious atmosphere of the unknown, that really captures, evaluates and explores the validity of a deep sense of undeniable anguish throughout its entire run. At first, as suggested by the title, you may think that this is just another boring and ordinary vampire movie. But we should never judge a movie by its title, the same way we should never judge a book by its cover. Black Water Vampire manages to be an intelligent mindset of unrestrained, embracing and sensible captivity of surreal – but exponentially realistic – horror. The movie slowly builds on its deleterious urge a sinister, malevolent, fearful and lucid atmosphere of agony and affliction, as you delve deeper and deeper into the mysterious secrecies of a forest that you soon perceive to be held by a hostile and malevolent force, that doesn’t want anybody to wander on its premises. 

Although the overall center of the plot is simple, and the formula upon which the movie unfolds is typical of the found footage genre, the atmosphere upon which the story reveals itself relies on a sinister background that manages to be not just genuine, but authentic and functional, slowly increasing, and showcasing its potential, as the movie progresses. The fear generated by the danger that subtlety reveals itself within the story is exceptionally grotesque, and as the danger becomes more plausible and palpable, the agony becomes more evident, lacerating and hurtful, to the point that you almost see yourself as part of the story, wandering what could you do to possibly get out of the forest alive.  

Evidently, Black Water Vampire is a lot similar to several other found footage films, in instances like structure, style and the unfolding of events. But here, you have a cohesive story, intelligent movie making devices, decent technical skills, a salutary and well-elaborated plot, and a coherent and credible acting, as well as a lot of other qualities. Nonetheless, they are inserted so subtlety, that if you’re not really paying attention to the movie, you will probably miss some of the details that, combined altogether, managed to make this movie superior from other movies of the genre. Although the story unfolds calmly, it has the ability of slowly involving you in a wider spectacle of affliction and apprehension, that becomes deeper and deeper as the movie progresses, to the point where you firmly believe that you don’t have any more the opportunity to escape.   

Don’t get me wrong. You may not be surprised at all at first, but if you really see this movie, appreciating it in the calmness it deserves, you will positively be captured by the genuine atmosphere of horror that this film wonderfully creates, and more marvelously, liberates towards its audience. 

As typical for the genre, the movie is shot by the perspective of their participants, with the four main actors taking turns in recording the images (although the actual scenes were obviously recorded by a professional cinematographer), so you mostly see only three of them at a time, and less, as they begin to disappear. Departing from the prerogative of an adventurous endeavor, they leave for their destination towards an atrocious fate, upon which there would be no return. An excellent movie, despite its simple premise and common ground rhetoric that at first seems to be equal to other movies of the genre, Black Water Vampire certainly can be regarded as one of the best found footage films ever made.                               

       
 Wagner

Meat is an infamous YouTube Channel, which has attracted a lot of controversy and attention in recent times. It was a mysterious channel, with a lot of disturbing, dark and distressing videos, seemingly random and purposeless. Inhospitable landscapes, women caught alone in desert places and disturbing repetitive imagery were some of the things captured on the videos. To this day, nobody knows who managed the account, and a lot of speculations could be read on the section comments for every video downloaded on the channel, with the opinions going to both extremes: while some people wrote that this was only a person with a lot of time available doing some videos to please himself – while laughing a lot when reading the absurd comments people wrote on his channel –, others speculated that this was a vicious, insane and highly intelligent serial killer, that was actually recording on camera desolate places to dispose bodies, registering landscapes with highly disturbing resonant sounds in the background, shooting images of dark and sinister interiors and recording people in the open, whilst he was hidden behind trees or bushes, possibly preparing himself to attack. Scary, isn’t it? But who knows the truth, besides the owner of the controversial channel? Probably, nobody else. 

Well, there is, undoubtedly, several channels a lot scarier than Meat, but while some of the videos were a lot softer than the urban legends created behind every single one of them, what used to be even scarier than what the videos were showing, was the things not appearing on the screen: if you really paid attention to the ambience, the sound, the background images, the landscape and all the adjacent information in every single video, you would certainly guess the person recording this certainly was doing a lot of things one is supposed not to do. But this was just the beginning of a wide range of speculations, not just on my part, but on the behalf of every single person that saw the videos, drowning deeply into the dark side of the mind behind the recorded images. Okay, perhaps it was just my imagination, taking too seriously the things I saw.

While doing some research myself (yes, I like playing the detective sometimes, probably the result of reading too much Arthur Conan Doyle in the past), I’ve collected enough evidence, which says that this individual is probably Canadian. Well, I have never been into Canada, so how could I know, right?   

Well, a lot of the landscapes, buildings and sites in his videos are typically Canadian, with some residents correctly identifying at least some of those places and sites in the video comments. One viewer correctly identified one of these as the Victory Soya Mills Silos, an abandoned facility in the vicinity of Toronto. Another loose set of references points out Canada as his area of activity as well, but you have to be very attentive to find this out. In one of these videos, it was possible to see a sign written in two languages, French and English, which are the two main languages of Canada.     

Well certainly, a lot of the things we write and think about this individual and the videos uploaded on the channel were a matter of pure speculation, and a lot of these same speculations helped a lot to inflate the internet urban legend on which the Meat Channel built its reputation. Probably this is nothing more than a work of a bored individual, that doesn’t know what to do in his spare time. At least, I hope this is the case.  

As my desire to show you this grew, unexpectedly, for no apparent reason,   unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you see) the owner of the channel deleted all videos some months ago, except one, a video upon which he explains – in a written message – why he decided to erase all the videos. Also, we may be talking not of a male person, but a female one. If you take a look into the Facebook and Twitter account of Meat – yes, he (or she), had both [if it was not deleted as well], the name given in the context possibly points out to a female person, not a male one. But of course, this person – whatever the sex gender may be – can be deliberately trying to fool us. It can be a prank, like a lot of the things we see on the internet these days. 

In the end, I think Meat probably would remain being one of those dark internet mysteries to remain unsolved. I can only hope seriously that this is just a dark prank, from a bored – and very smart – aristocratic student, with a penchant for dark humor, from a very expensive college in nearby Toronto, with a lot of time in his hands, than the more dramatic rumors that the more drastic Meat fans have speculated about. Well, unfortunately, there are a lot of demented maniacs and serial killers out there, and some of them are cleverer, more than what we could possibly like to admit… and maybe one of these insane individuals was the mastermind behind Meat, recording and uploading his videos on YouTube until recently, while laughing hysterically about how he was easily getting away with murder, while showing through his YouTube channel little pieces and fragments of his illicit activities. Very dark and psychotic, right? Sincerely, I don’t even like to think about it, but let’s face it… there is always the possibility! Well, while his videos were ambiguous enough to let us point out innumerous interpretations – from the most terrible and sadistic ones to the more plausible and naïve probabilities –, one thing is certain: it doesn’t matter trying to speculate. Whatever the truth may be, we will simply never know.    


​Wagner

Well, being home alone, for most people, means liberty, freedom, happiness, the chance to finally hear out loud the music you want to, to see that really cool television show that only you like it, and do whatever pleases you the most, until the parents, the roommate, the wife or the husband gets home, which means that the fun you had, when you were totally alone, is gone for good. 

Well, being alone means fun, right? Well, not always! Let’s remember that very good horror movies make useful the pretext of being alone, to do a very cohesive and scary fearful story. Movies like When a Stanger Calls and Mischief Night are perfect examples on why being home alone is not always a very good situation, and how what appears to be a chance to finally feel on your own could turn into a very dreadful and deadliest situation, as fast as the blink of an eye.

Of course, for a situation like this to be scary, you have to add the elements that disrupts the tranquility of the ambient, like the night, strange noises, and, of course –
the main component – a pervasive and dangerous assailant, which means that you will regret the decision of a quiet solitary night, in the comfort of your house.

Experience a situation like these in real life can be really frightening. Can you imagine hearing things outside, look at the window, and see nothing? And suddenly hear the slow and cautious walk of an intruder, and have that feeling, that you know something is very, very wrong? And have to hide under your bed, or inside the closet, praying for the intruder not to find you?

Well, while this kind of situation is very unwanted and potentially dangerous in real life, they really do very nice and frightening horror stories and movies. And they appeal to us in such a high intensity because it could happen to any one of us. The tension and the fear built in the air is especially painful just because you don’t know who exactly is the person trespassing, what it is the main motive behind the intrusion, what the intruder will really do (steal? rape? kidnap? kill? all of these options?), and if you have enough physical strength to overcome him, and possibly escape alive well, or not. And in the right mood, in the correct pace and in the proper tension, this kind of story can be scary, more than we could possibly imagine.    

Well, for your fun, the video below has 10 scary stories, that will make you think twice, the next time you’re about to be home alone. But you have to listen to them completely on your own, in the dead of night, in the darkness of your bedroom. Otherwise, it will have no effect. Everybody is brave and courageous with other people at broad daylight, but completely alone, in the darkness of the dawn… well, that’s when you really see if you are brave enough… or not!      

I know that Jack Torrance is the main character of Stephen King’s The Shining, but today’s talk is about another Jack Torrance: a freaking and terrifying YouTube channel. Jack Torrance – whose name was obviously inspired by the aforementioned character – is a creepy and sinister YouTube channel that has a lot of found footage videos, some of them terrifyingly creepy, dark and disturbing.

The channel claims these videos are all real, and that they were found at an estate sale, near Austin, Texas. Now, the person who runs the channel is digitalizing all those videos, to upload it on YouTube.   

Some videos are really creepy and disturbing. Apparently all of them decoded, they are usually very short and sinister. In less than half an hour you can see them all. The two minute video Found Footage Super 8 Reel 13.49585.76: Fragment 86t shows what appears to be a person in a dark place, with a flashlight. The individual enters an elevator, and suddenly, passing ahead of this person, there is a dark, unrecognizable figure, and breathing in fear and agony, the person who is filming the video goes to the panel of the elevator, and try to push the buttons to another floor, in an attempt to escape whatever the dangers the mysterious figure could possibly inflict. A very vague reflex of this person can be seen in the elevator door. When this person reaches another floor, after a few steps, an acute noise is heard, and the video suddenly finishes. 

    The almost sepia forty three seconds video Found Footage Super 8 Reel 97.16521.61: Fragment 5s, shows disrupted images of a girl playing, when, in the end, what appears to be a thin, long cryptid arm with enormous, giant fingernails, goes towards the little girl. The thirty seconds Found Footage Super 8 Reel 45.876.78: Fragment 87t, although it has a very unclear image, shows someone inside some place sinister. After opening a creaking door, the person sees the frightening figure of a long-haired dark apparition in a rocking chair, and then the person shooting the video tries to escape.   

The one minute and a half video Found Footage Super 8 Reel 15.656.9: Fragment 5b it is one of the most mysterious and disturbing videos of the channel. It is set in a creepy place, with a lot of bizarre objects. You can see skulls, old photographs, a demonic mask hanging from a wall, a strange hand-like chandelier, and a fox mask, encircled by candles burning, in what appears to be the place of a ritual. Afterwards, you will see a mysterious unidentified object, and a shadow embracing it, that suddenly disappears (obviously, through editing), and someone with a bizarre, horrible mask comes along, in front of the camera, for the rest of the video. 

The Found Footage Super 8 Reel 10.4566.26: Fragment 44X shows a very nervous and anxious person, breathing deeply in affliction, investigating a dark place. When he (assuming that it is, indeed, a male person) opens up a curtain, we see a dead corpse (again, assuming that it is one, the image is very dark and distorted), and the person apparently panics, and a strange noise suddenly disrupts over the video. If you freeze the image in a proper time in the one minute and five seconds Found Footage VHS Cassette 031 Fragment 25n video, you can see what appears to be a demonic figure slowly appearing behind some clothes in a wardrobe. You can freeze the image several times throughout the video, and caught the demon in different positions, as it is moving forward, pushing away the clothes. It has gigantic hands, and a very large, ugly face.   

Not all videos are interesting: some of them have just ordinary images, or dull sequences. But most of them are intriguing, to say the least. Of course, this could be just a hoax, given the fact that practically all videos have, very conveniently, distorted, vague and unclear images, to give the impression that they are old. At least, the product of antique film reels, or Betamax format, like it is explained, in the channel description. Despite being curious, the channel failed to attract attention from a lot of the more mainstream web mystery solvers. Some of them probably think that the channel simply doesn’t worth their time. But the question here is: these videos are authentic, or not? At least, some of them could be real? What do you think? Could we solve the mystery behind the channel Jack Torrance someday?

Personally, I think it is a very cool, but somewhat misleading and pretentious hoax. Certainly, from the perspective of someone who analyzed some of the creepiest and sinister YouTube channels, I think Jack Torrance is more like an entertaining, funny joke. Sure there are some cool videos, but a lot of things simply don’t match. To make fake videos nowadays is so easy, especially if you have the correct technological paraphernalia… if you own a Macintosh, a good digital camera, and really knows how to handle movie programs, to shot this kind of video, and set all the arrangements to give it a dark and old style impression is easy beyond any possibility… but we have to recognize the creativity – at least in some of the more well finished videos – of whoever it is behind this project. Despite being an inferior enigma, especially if compared to the more sinister YouTube channels, in my personal evaluation Jack Torrance remains being a very interesting YouTube mystery, that deserves, at least, a little attention. 


​Wagner