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

Tim Roth – whose complete name is Timothy Simon Roth – is a notorious British actor and director, born in London in May 1961, active since 1982. After gaining exposure playing a skinhead in the made-for-TV movie Made in Britain, Roth managed to consolidate himself as a promising young actor. For the remainder of the eighties, he was able to become a rising professional star, securing roles in several movies and television productions. 

His first major movie was the fabulous 1990 dramedy Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, written and directed by Tom Stoppard, based on a play written by Stoppard himself. Marvelously funny, on this movie the two main characters, Guildenstern (Roth) and Rosencrantz (played by Gary Oldman) – originally Shakespearean characters that are featured on Hamlet – decide to find the real meaning behind their mundane existence, when they are not needed in the plot of Hamlet.  

When the nineties came, Roth’s output increasingly expanded, as he started to participate in several American productions. In 1992, he starred in Jumpin' at the Boneyard, along with Samuel L. Jackson. On this movie, Roth played Manny, a character that surprises his younger brother Dan (played by Alexis Arquette) stealing his home. Then both brothers – forced by arbitrary and turbulent circumstances – starts to walk by the neighborhood of their youth, and slowly reconcile, only to succumb to a drastic fate, becoming victims of a sordid fatality. A beautiful movie with a virtuous and melancholic intensity, Jumpin' at the Boneyard is a marvelous, yet defining drama, where all necessary elements, from dialogues, to setting, to characters and competent direction, were perfectly combined altogether, to create a sensible and dense picture of the vulnerability of the human condition. 

In 1992, Roth had a major role on Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, initiating a partnership that would result in three more films. In 1995, Roth played villain Archibald Cunningham, in the epic drama movie Rob Roy, opposite Liam Neeson, that plays the title character Rob Roy MacGregor. A historical biopic, the movie narrates the story of a Scottish clan chief, Rob Roy, who clashes with a terrible and unscrupulous nobleman, Cunningham, that is desperate to subjugate the Scotsmen to his sordid interests.  

In 1999, Roth made his directorial debut, with The War Zone. In 2001, with the blockbuster Planet of the Apes, Roth managed to become a select member of Hollywood, consolidating his reputation as a viable actor, as well as his mainstream stardom and celebrity status, distancing himself a little from independent cinema and art house pictures, that were until then his primary sources of revenue and exposure, the means by which he became a notorious actor, in a similar vein to Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling and to a minor extent, Edward Norton.  

In 2005, Roth played a character named Jeff Platzer, in the horror movie Dark Water, starred by Jennifer Connelly and directed by Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles. In 2007, Roth starred as George Farber in the movie Funny Games. Directed by Michael Haneke, this pungent and aggressive drama was a remake of a homonymous 1997 movie, directed by Haneke himself. The plot revolves around a couple, George and Ann Farber (played by Naomi Watts), who are terrorized by two psychopathic individuals, Peter and Paul, played by Brady Corbet and Michael Pitt, respectively. The story, that has a dense and cruel premise, shows two hostile and nefarious youngsters, who amuse themselves by torturing physically and psychologically a decent and friendly couple.

In 2008, Roth participated in another blockbuster – The Incredible Hulk –, playing the hero’s antagonist, a character named Emil Blonsky, that transforms himself into a villain known as Abomination. With a budget of US$ 150 million, the movie grossed US$ 263.4 million at the box office. In 2012, Roth played Detective Michael Bryer, opposite Richard Gere, in the fantastic drama-thriller film Arbitrage.

From 2009 to 2011, Roth portrayed Dr. Cal Lightman, in the Fox Television Show Lie to Me. In a rare incursion into a TV series – the actor until then had participated only in four –, Roth portrayed for three seasons a man specialized in reading and deciphering facial microexpressions of people, instantly acknowledging if they are telling the truth or not. His company, The Lightman Group, was frequently employed by police and security agencies to interview crime suspects, to discover if they are telling the truth or concealing relevant information. 

Since 2017, Roth stars as the lead in the British-Canadian Television Co-production series Tin Star. In January, premiered in Sundance a movie titled Luce, on which he has a role. The movie stars Naomi Watts, his screen partner in Funny Games. In July, it will be released the movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, in which Roth has a small role. Directed by Quentin Tarantino, the movie features an ensemble cast that includes Bruce Dern, Al Pacino, Dakota Fanning, James Remar, James Marsden and Michael Madsen, amongst many others. 

As the decades passed, undoubtedly, Tim Roth has managed to become one of the best actors of his generation, doing complex roles in relevant movies. In a career spanning almost four decades, Tim Roth has participated in over eighty movies (including televisions films). We sure wish him to continue, hoping to see him in eighty more productions or so, according to his professional ambitions. 


​Wagner

Richard Gere is an amazing and terrific actor, unquestionably one of my favorites. Having started his career in theater in the late sixties, in the mid-seventies the actor started doing films. His first movie was the 1975 cop thriller Report to the Commissioner, on which Gere had a small role. The actor started to gain profile and fame in the eighties, with romantic and dramatic movies, that would ultimately consolidate his reputation as a viable leading actor in Hollywood and a seductive gentleman, somewhat appellative to female audiences. From then on, the actor became a major star in the American movie industry. 

His better-known movies in the romantic and drama genres are American Gigolo, An Officer and a Gentleman, Pretty Woman, Mr. Jones, Runaway Bride, Unfaithful and Nights in Rodanthe, amongst others. 1982 An Officer and a Gentleman increased Gere’s profile as a Hollywood star. 1990 Pretty Woman – on which Gere shared the screen with a then rising Julia Roberts –, significantly consolidated his place of honor in the industry, besides propelling Julia Roberts to Hollywood stardom. Richard Gere and Julia Roberts would again play a romantic couple in the fabulous 1999 movie Runaway Bride. 

In 2002, Gere shared the screen with the marvelous actress Diane Lane, on the brilliant drama film Unfaithful, a remake of 1969 La Femme infidèle, by notorious French filmmaker Claude Chabrol. On this movie, Gere plays Edward, a man that discovers his wife Connie (Diane Lane) is cheating on him with another man, Paul (played by French actor Olivier Martinez). When he acknowledges his wife’s infidelity, he decides to meet under a false prerogative his wife’s lover. When he sees in the man’s home a snow globe – which he gave as a gift to his wife –, Edward kills Paul in a mortifying explosion of rage. 

This is a formidable drama film, that puts all the correct elements into place to deliver to audiences a solid and drastic panorama of marital infidelity. An impeccable, cohesive and intense drama, Unfaithful is a marvelous movie, with a very involving, consistent and dense story. The movie was a box office success, that generated seventy million dollars in profit. Richard Gere and Diane Lane are radiant together. They had previously collaborated in the 1984 movie The Cotton Club. In 2008, they again played a couple, in the film Nights in Rodanthe.

Despite some romantic and drama movies that are astoundingly marvelous, in my modest opinion, what Richard Gere really does best, with exceptional capabilities – and with exceedingly proverbial acting skills – is to play law enforcement agents, government investigators and police officers, whether they be morally sensible or depravedly corrupt. Like Al Pacino, Richard Gere really knows how to perfectly play a cop by all means. On this genre, his most significant movies are Internal Affairs, The Jackal, The Flock, Brooklyn's Finest and The Double. 

On the 1990 movie Internal Affairs, Richard Gere’s character is Dennis Peck, a corrupt police officer, who built a misguided façade of impeccable conduct and role model for the Los Angeles Police Department. Nevertheless, he falls into the radar of Raymond Avilla (played by Andy Garcia), an Internal Affairs detective, who is willing to hunt and to eliminate police officers that are evil and corrupt. On The Jackal, Richard Gere played Declan Mulqueen, a former Provisional IRA member, that has to hunt a professional assassin known only as the Jackal, played by Bruce Willis. 

One of the best movies I have seen with Richard Gere was 2007 The Flock, on which he played Erroll Babbage, an astute, but brutal employee of the Department of Public Safety, responsible for monitoring registered sex offenders. He is about to retire, so he has to train his replacement, the somewhat idealistic, but persistent Allison Lowry (played by Claire Danes), on how to deal with violent abusers. Initially distrustful of the young woman's potential and determination, Babbage eventually becomes aware of her competence and dedication, and the two cross together professional challenges, upon which both learn a lot about themselves and the human nature in the process. Babbage’s approach to his job is one of deep commitment; he regularly visits a family whose daughter is a missing person, and her case was never solved, something that leads him to a feeling of failure and debt.

This movie is absolutely amazing; people who love relentless thrillers – with a lot of fear, demise and suspense –, will definitely appreciate this one. With an incisive and coherent plot, as well as impeccable performances by both Richard Gere and Claire Danes, The Flock is one of those movies that you definitely doesn’t wish to end; its marvelous qualities were all perfectly arranged in a dramatic, sensible and cohesive structure, that undoubtedly extracts the best storyline ever for this genre of movie. 

In 2009, Richard Gere played New York City police officer Eddie Dugan, in the   Antoine Fuqua directed cop thriller Brooklyn's Finest. On this excellent movie – the very best in Gere’s career, in my opinion – the actor played a cop about to retire (yes, in a similar vein to his character Erroll Babbage in The Flock); he has only one week left of service, so he is designated to oversee newly hired police officers. He executes a relatively mediocre work, and his first partner, after a coward attitude on the part of Dugan, that refused to interfere in a couple’s argument – upon which the husband became violent – under the pretext that they were in another police district zone, asked his superiors to change the mentor. In the next day, he was killed in action. Then Dugan, with a new partner, was implicated in a store discussion, over an attempted robbery. His partner had fired his gun, leaving the supposed assailant, a teenage boy, deaf, which puts Dugan in a controversial position, in direct conflict against his superiors. His only comfort in life is a prostitute whom he regularly visits, and he plans to ask her to run away with him when his retirement begins. 

This awesome movie also stars Ethan Hawke and Don Cheadle as police officers. All of them cultivates a very different relation to their jobs. The storyline has no central plot, and keeps interchanging between the major characters. Wesley Snipes also stars in the movie, as a notorious criminal, that has a somewhat close relationship with Clarence Butler, Don Cheadle’s character. Vincent D'Onofrio does a small part in the beginning of the movie. 

A formidable movie, one of the best cop thrillers that I have seen, Brooklyn's Finest has a spectacular and exceptional storyline that revolves around human dilemmas, the general uneasiness of life and the problems brought about by police corruption. A great work of art that definitely delivers a sensational and suspenseful color of density, apprehension and drama into the plot, this astoundingly marvelous movie has everything to please enthusiasts of the genre.  

In 2011, Gere played retired CIA agent Paul Shepherdson, in The Double. The plot concerns a dangerous mission that requires consistent investigation. Shepherdson is summoned by his former superior, Tom Highland (played by Martin Sheen) to investigate the homicide of Dennis Darden, a politician, whose M.O. resembles a professional assassin he tried to catch in the Cold War, but failed – a mysterious soviet agent known only as Cassius. After positively assuring to Highland and his former co-workers that the killing was done by a copycat murderer, Shepherdson is assigned to work with a young and skilled agent, Ben Geary (played by Topher Grace), an enthusiastic and intelligent professional exceedingly determined to catch the killer, to bring light to the homicide. Geary is also a talented criminologist, and has done research and written a dissertation about Cassius.  

After the proper investigations, Geary eventually discovers, and reveals what he already suspected from a long time: that Shepherdson was in fact Cassius. In the end, when confronted by Geary with the information, Shepherdson confirms, and reveals that, likewise, he discovered Geary to be himself a double agent, a Russian spy, who was carefully chosen and led to this precise circumstance by his superiors in the Kremlin, to capture him and to put a definitive end to the Cassius dossier. He even killed Dennis Darden using his M.O. to attract his attention. In the end, they unite forces to capture a dangerous criminal named Bozlovski, a long personal feud of Shepherdson, who later dies from injuries sustained in the resulting confrontation, after killing Bozlovski using his typical M.O. as Cassius, slicing the throat with a wire hidden in his wristwatch. When authorities arrive, to protect Shepherdson’s reputation, Geary lies, and says that Bozlovski was Cassius. He also decides to stay in the U.S., with his wife and son, abandoning the idea to return to Russia.

A great movie that definitely fulfills the expectations for a decent spy thriller, some things in the storyline where relatively obvious, given to the title of the film, that already delivers a clue. Nevertheless, the “double” to which the title refers is ambiguous, as can refer to either Shepherdson or Geary, the two main characters.

On these three final movies that I want to comment, Richard Gere haven’t played cops or law related roles, but likewise, they were all morally deficient and cynical characters, aggressive to some extent. In 2007, Richard Gere played unscrupulous and egocentric journalist Simon Hunt, in the movie The Hunting Party. On this movie, his character reunites with a former partner, known only as “Duck” (played by Terrence Howard) to catch war criminal Dragoslav Bogdanovi
, nicknamed “The Fox”, a depraved villain loosely inspired by real life Bosnian Serb politician Radovan Karadži
. Together with freshman Benjamin Strauss (played by Jesse Eisenberg), they embark on a sinister journey, to find the most dangerous men in the Balkans. 

Somewhere in the movie, the plot reveals the motivation behind Simon’s obsession for Bogdanovi
. Several years previously, Simon and Duck were work colleagues covering the Bosnian War. Simon in the capacity of a reporter, and Duck as a camera operator. Eventually, Simon became enamored with a local woman, and began a relationship with her. She got pregnant, and they were seeking a future together. Nevertheless, she died when the armed militias commanded by Bogdanovi
 completely destroyed the town where she lived. When Simon saw Bogdanovi
 for the first time, enraged, he felt tempted to attack him, but was prevented by Duck, as it was too dangerous, given the fact that Bogdanovi
 was surrounded by armed men. Therefore, Simon, fulfilled by hatred and bitterness, swore to track him down someday. From then on, because of his depression, Simon’s career as a journalist started to sink, and he never properly recovered. Simon was in fact seeking personal revenge.

On their way to catch the criminal – beloved and considered a national hero among the people in Republika Srpska, inside Bosnia and Herzegovina –, they encounter several problems and nefarious obstacles in the pursue of their objective. They even make their way into a UN office, who suspects them to be CIA agents, and eventually, they act like they were, when this proves to be a smart move. As the local villagers’ gossip spread, Bogdanovi
 discovers that he was being sought after by a group of foreigners, and, in anticipation, orders his henchmen to capture the three individuals. They are eventually captured, and when Srdjan, one of the most ruthless of Bogdanovi
’s bodyguards, is about to start killing them, he is surprisingly shot by a member of a CIA squad team, who arrives to save Simon, Duck and Benjamin in the last minute. 

After being severely reprimanded by authorities later, Simon, Duck and Benjamin are ordered to leave the country immediately. When they are in a hangar to board a plane to the US, they decide to run away, to track down Bogdanovi
 for once and for all. Having investigated his habits, they eventually discover his whereabouts, and find him hunting without his bodyguards in a forest (he had earned the nickname the Fox due to his habit of hunting foxes). They capture him, and leave him completely unarmed and helpless in the busiest area of a village full of people related to the victims of his cruelty, leaving them to do justice with their own hands. They recognize him, and Bogdanovi
 fruitlessly try to run. 

The movie ends with Simon and Duck reaffirming their friendship. In the closing credits, real life information about the characters based on real war criminals – Radovan Karadži
 and Ratko Mladi
 – are displayed, though they are now outdated. Both war criminals are serving life sentences for crimes against humanity. The movie also greatly espouses the hypocrisy of both the US and the UN about their attempts to catch war criminals in the Balkan Peninsula, since they in fact knew where they were, and openly engaged in exchange and negotiations with them in shady, immoral and obscure political interests. 

The Hunting Party is a formidably great and spectacular movie, full of action, suspense and drama, as well as elements of apprehension and anxiety. With a tremendously great and sensational storyline, this movie is an awesome tip for everyone who enjoys an impeccable and fabulously conceived international thriller. Certainly, this is a masterpiece, that can be included among Gere’s best movies. 

In 2012, Richard Gere played Robert Miller, a respected and successful business executive, in Arbitrage. Nevertheless, things are not what they appear to be. Miller’s company has been involved in fraud by his own initiative, and he has an affair with a woman. He has been leading a double life, and concealing it from his family.  

In a certain occasion, he gets involved in a car crash when he was with his mistress, and she dies. Miller becomes desperate to leave, and disappear from the scene. He then calls Jimmy Grant (played by Nate Parker) the son of an employee – that is somewhat indebted to Miller, since he helped him in the past with the authorities, when he got involved in illicit activities – to pick him up on the spot and take him home. He arrives late to his residence, and his wife (played by Susan Sarandon), unbeknownst to him, was awake in bed, and starts to get suspicious of him. 

When investigations about the accident starts, police detective Bryer (played by Tim Roth) rapidly becomes distrustful of Miller, especially after discovering a connection between him and Grant. Meanwhile, Brooke (played by Brit Marling), Miller’s daughter and his business associate, discovers the fraud, and confronts her father. 

Bryer eventually takes forward the case against Grant, while trying to arrange evidence against Miller. Facing the possibility of jail, Grant begins to press Miller to confess the crime to the police. Staring at the moral and ethical consequences of his actions, Miller knows that turn himself in is the right thing to do. Nevertheless, Miller is about to sell his company in a multimillion dollar deal. He cannot confess the crime in the moment, because he will lose the deal, provoking a major scandal in the financial market, ruining himself, his family and all his group of investors. He tells Grant that they have to wait, until the deal is properly closed.    

Nevertheless, Miller manages to arrange circumstances on his behalf to avoid prosecution, and accuses detective Bryer of falsifying evidence to implicate him in the accident, which is believable enough to convince authorities. Subsequently, the law official is forbidden to get near Miller. Even the case against Grant is dismantled. But things are not going as well as Miller thinks. His wife knows everything and wants the divorce; she openly tells him that she was awake the day he arrived late at home, and will tell everything to the police if he doesn’t sign the papers. In the end of the movie, Miller is seen receiving a homage in a luxury social dinner. 

This is a spectacular and unforgettable movie, that highly exposes the hypocrisy, so normal in the society of appearances that we live in. With a decent, intelligent and cohesive plot, the storyline departs and evolves from the axial point of a debatable and suspicious circumstance, questioning what really hides behind the façade of a respectable man. All the four major characters in the movie were marvelously displayed by the dynamic, gracious and vivid performances of Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Brit Marling and Tim Roth.  

The Dinner, released in 2017, is one of Gere’s most recent films. He had done only one other movie after this, titled Three Christs, that was released in the same year. On The Dinner, the plot is very simple. Two couples, Stan and Katelyn Lohman (Richard Gere and Rebecca Hall), and Paul and Claire Lohman (Steve Coogan and Laura Linney) meet at an exclusive restaurant. Initially, everything is unclear, and things develop gradually and surprisingly. Stan and Paul are brothers. Stan is running for political office, and Paul did not wanted to go. It’s difficult to understand what they have to discuss so urgently, as tensions are clear, especially between Paul and Stan, although Paul is hostile and exceptionally rude to everyone.

As the movie develops, we learn that their teenage offspring, Michael Lohman, son of Paul and Claire, Rick Lohman, son of Stan and his ex-wife Barbara (played by Chloë Sevigny) and Beau Lohman, adopted son of Stan and Barbara, had committed a vicious, sadistic and brutal crime together: they had burnt to death a homeless person inside an ATM. Therefore, the couples have to decide together what they will do. Stan favors telling the truth to the authorities, while Claire refuses to surrender her son, and to accept that they did what they did on purpose, trying to convince herself, as well as the others, that everything was a terrible accident. Which evidences left clear, wasn’t at all. Nevertheless, Claire do everything in her power to protect her son, and prevent him from facing the consequences of the horrendous ordeal he committed, and for which he was the major responsible. 

Although this movie is much more frozen and slow – predictable and monotonous to a moderate degree – compared to the other movies mentioned above, even so The Dinner has strong qualities. The plot is cohesive, afflictive and dense, the dialogues are intelligently displayed, and the general storyline is very apprehensive, credible and genuine. The fragile relationship between the characters alludes to the difficult and complex dramas of reality, and the hostility that arises among them expresses the natural conflicts that exists within a family. Definitely, The Dinner is an interesting movie, competently directed by the exceedingly talented Israeli-American filmmaker Oren Moverman.

With more than fifty films in his curriculum, Richard Gere has conquered his place of honor in the American movie industry. In the current year, he stars as Max Finch in the BBC television series MotherFatherSon (written exactly as it is, altogether), which marks a drastic shift in Gere’s career. This is the first time he stars in a television series. Gere has scarcely done any television work in the past. 

Observing his career attentively, we learn that it is possible to see two different versions of Richard Gere. One that is more charismatic and serene – almost fun, depending on the film –, present in romantic and drama movies, and the other that is more brutal, hostile and ferocious, that is possible to see in cop thrillers, although more aggressive, serious and dense characters share these same features in movies that are not necessarily police-related tragedies, but delves deeply into the dark underground of the nihilistic and obscure paths of the human nature, like the last movie mentioned, as well as several others. 

Richard Gere, who is sixty-nine years old, is deeply involved in humanitarian causes throughout the world. He is a practicing Buddhist, and supports the Tibetan Independence Movement. As to what concerns his professional career, he will certainly continue his memorable contributions to cinema, the big screen and the dramatic arts, as audiences surely expect to see him in many more movies and roles in the future. 



​Wagner

Actor Luke Perry – whose birth name was Coy Luther Perry III – better known as the character Dylan McKay on the Aaron Spelling produced Fox television hit show Beverly Hills, 90210, has died in the beginning of the month, March 4, in Los Angeles. He had suffered a stroke in February 27, and was immediately hospitalized. He then suffered a second stroke. Apparently, after not regaining consciousness, his family authorized the medical staff to turn off the life support machines.  

The American television industry is in shock that such an icon and a gentleman – a professional loved and respected by everyone who knew and worked with him – had passed away so soon. His family and work colleagues, from both past projects and the present day, are currently dealing with the pain for having lost so suddenly someone they love so much.  

Born in October 11, 1966, in Mansfield, Ohio, Luke Perry moved to Los Angeles when he was very young, in 1984 – he was only seventeen years old – to try a career in show business. After auditioning for 256 acting jobs, without positive results, Perry decided to relocate to New York City, where he finally had better luck, acquiring roles in the shows Loving and Another World.

His persistence was nevertheless rewarded. Perry’s big break came in the end of the decade, when, in 1989, famous producer Aaron Spelling was casting young actors for his next show, Beverly Hills, 90210, that became a popular hit. Perry initially auditioned for the role of Steve Sanders, but actor Ian Ziering got the part. Eventually, though, his talent and dramatic skills impressed the casting agents, and he got the role of the restless and rebellious Dylan McKay, one of the most iconic characters within the show.

The show run for ten seasons, from 1990 to 2000, producing effectively 293 episodes. Luke Perry was a series regular until 1995, when he left the show, determined to search better acting opportunities and more challenging roles. However, he returned in 1998, and remained until the show’s cancellation, in 2000. For the remainder of the series, Perry was described in the credits of every episode as a special guest star, though he was in fact a regular. In total, he had participated in 199 episodes. 

In his three years absence from the series, he starred in several films, with moderate degrees of success. He starred alongside Eric Roberts and Jennifer Tilly in the movie American Strays, released in 1996. He then played a cop in the movie Riot, released in 1997. Based on real-life events, the movie depicts the Los Angeles riots that took place after the beating of late Rodney King. 

After Beverly Hills, 90210 ended its run, Perry had established a reputation and a name in the business, and easily landed acting roles in series and made-for-television films. He found difficulty however, to distance himself from Dylan McKay, that remains his most iconic role, and the one he will be probably mostly associated with. About that, Perry has said: "I'm going to be linked with him until I die, but that's actually just fine. I created Dylan McKay. He's mine".

Perry developed a close friendship with several of his 90210 co-stars, especially Jason Priestley, who played Brandon Walsh. Priestley, that is also a professional motor racing driver, suffered two accidents while competing in a circuit. The first in 1995, and the second, in 2002. The second accident was a serious one; Priestley suffered massive injuries, and had to be hospitalized for treatment. Luke Perry visited him regularly during this period. The two remained close friends until Perry’s death. When hearing about the sad news, Priestley published a personal eulogy in social media, lamenting the precocious passing of his beloved friend. 

Riverdale – a show that had Perry on its main cast –, had its shooting schedule suspended upon hearing the news of his death, though now they are back to normal.   Although he died too soon, Perry’s legacy as a TV icon and professional actor will remain. Besides Dylan McKay, other memorable roles the actor has played was Jeremiah, in the eponymous TV series, and Reverend Jeremiah Cloutier, in the prison television hit show Oz.


In total, Luke Perry had credits to his name in thirty movies, five direct-to-video films, sixteen television films and thirty five television series – upon which eight had him as part of the main cast –, in a career that lasted almost thirty seven years. Perry unfortunately enters the select hall of famous actors who died too early, like James Gandolfini, who died at 51 years old in 2013, and will always be remembered as the iconic Tony Soprano, the patriarch of a mafia family in the television hit show The Sopranos. 

Luke Perry left a mark in the television industry, with unforgettable characters that will remain loved by the audiences. He may have died too soon, but his artistic legacy will stay, being widely appreciated by old and young generations of television series enthusiasts, for years to come. 


​Wagner

American actor Wentworth Miller became famous in 2005, by playing Michael Scofield, the lead in the Fox television drama Prison Break; with an exhilarating premise, the show followed Scofield as he commits a crime deliberately, to go to the same prison where his brother, Lincoln Burrows (played by Dominic Purcell) is serving a sentence for a crime he did not commit. As his brother was facing a death sentence, Scofield had tattooed a large, complex drawing on his upper body, that contained effectively in a concealed design the plant of the prison, to help his brother escape. The show was an instant success. I personally watched several seasons. The first season followed Michael in prison, meticulously executing his detailed plan. The second season saw the brothers – with several other inmates – as escapees from the Fox River Penitentiary, while a subplot displayed how Lincoln Burrows was a scapegoat to a federal scale-conspiracy, that would persecute the brothers for the remainder of the show. 

The following seasons saw Michael arrested in other penitentiaries for similar purposes, with effectively well-designed premises, while the side story also developed consistently.  I personally haven’t followed the show religiously in all of its seasons, because eventually my interest was gone. But the show was quite a success. Having ended in 2009, it was revived in 2017 for an additional season. But after the show, Wentworth Miller’s career has stalled. And apparently, by his own conscious decision, fueled by personal difficulties. 

With only ten movies in his filmography, he has done mainly television, and even then, sometimes his work is mainly sporadic. Miller has revealed that he suffers from depression – as well as suicidal tendencies – and it’s difficult for him to deal with his illness. The actor is active on social media, and is known to be very open and sincere about his condition and personal life struggles. In 2016, the LAD Bible’s Facebook page published a meme mocking his weight gain, by which Miller frankly responded: "I've struggled with depression since childhood. It's a battle that's cost me time, opportunities, relationships, and a thousand sleepless nights”. The actor explained that he had gained an excessive amount of weight because he found solace consuming food. The actor was also semi-retired at the time. After his response, the LAD Bible staff immediately published a post apologizing for their drastically deceitful behavior.   

Nevertheless, Miller is a multifaceted individual, with a great array of talents. He is also a skilled and sagacious screenwriter, and his ability on this field has been slowly achieving modest degrees of recognition. He wrote the screenplay for Stoker, a 2013 mysterious suspense drama film starring Mia Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman and Matthew Goode. On this movie, India Stoker – Wasikowska’s character – gets profoundly disturbed after her father dies in an automobile accident, and suddenly her enigmatic uncle Charlie (Goode), whose existence she was not aware of, starts living together with her and her mother Evelyn (Kidman). Although I can’t remember precisely the general storyline – I saw this movie several years ago – I recollect perfectly that I have liked very much seeing it. Miller submitted the story to studios using a pseudonym. Eventually, the script was integrated into a Hollywood blacklist, of the best unproduced screenplays circulating throughout the movie industry at the time. Miller also wrote the screenplay for a related story, titled Uncle Charlie, that would serve as a prequel to Stoker. A movie based on this screenplay remains unproduced.   

Miller also wrote the screenplay for the 2016 movie The Disappointments Room (that I personally evaluated, and you can read here), starring Kate Beckinsale. A real disappointment, this movie is so ordinary that you certainly cannot afford the luxury of wasting your time seeing it, though Miller remains cohesive as a storyteller. Currently, Wentworth Miller is reportedly in the works to write the screenplay for an adaption of a literary work titled The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, though this is not yet confirmed.

The most recent work Miller has done on television was as an incarnation of super-villain Captain Cold, on two different series, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. Apparently, his work was concluded on these shows, and the public doesn’t known precisely what he will be doing in 2019, or if he has already plans for 2019. With his mental state and general health being a primary concern, the forty-six year old (yes, he looks younger, but he was born in June, 1972) actor and screenwriter doesn’t have to justify each move he made, though he frequently does – very gently and kindly –, though it is not his obligation.   

His most relevant movies to date has been 2003 The Human Stain, an adaptation of a novel by Phillip Roth – where he portrays a younger version of Coleman Silk, the character of Anthony Hopkins –, 2010 Resident Evil: Afterlife, as Chris Redfield and 2014 The Loft, an English language version of a 2008 Belgian movie titled Loft, both directed by Erik Van Looy, where he plays an exceedingly malevolent character named Luke Seacord. His last movie to date is the 2015 short 2 Hours 2 Vegas. 

Miller is also involved in charities and humanitarian causes, like the ManKind Project and Active Minds. As his relevant and voluntary work helping people consumes his time, his professional activities will proportionally slow down. He also attends several events throughout the world – like Comic Con and WonderCon –, where he interacts directly with fans and admirers. Miller certainly deserves happiness and success in whatever projects he gets involved, whether it would be in his personal or professional life. We miss seeing him in movies and television, but everyone has the right and the freedom to redirect energy and resources to pursue the correct priorities. With his positive and mature outlook on life, though, Wentworth Miller definitely has everything to succeed and overcome the challenges that might get on his way.  


​Wagner

Replicas is a 2019 futuristic science fiction thriller film, directed by Jeffrey Nachmanoff, starring Keanu Reeves, Alice Eve, Thomas Middleditch and John Ortiz. On this movie, Reeves plays William Foster, a neuroscientist and employee of a biomedical conglomerate called Bionyne, that works to improve the technology to clone human beings, as a means to avoid death and perpetuate life, and transform this into a lucrative business. 

The movie is a relatively decent thriller, if you are willing to ignore the fact that has a storyline saturated with obvious and rude predictabilities. The movie begins with William Foster trying to transplant the conscience of an individual into an android machinery, but the procedure fails miserably, as the conscience rejects its unnatural cyborg body, despite the fact that Foster frankly believes he is really close to make the procedure a success. When he arrives home, he and his family – his wife Mona (Eve), his son Matt and his two daughters, Sophie and Zoe – are completely prepared to enjoy a well-deserved vacation.

They embark in their huge family van, but after a few minutes into the road, they suffer a terrible accident, where everybody dies, except for William (see where I want to get?); exceedingly desperate, he has the means to bring his family back to life, and asks for the help of his work colleague and best friend, Ed (Middleditch), who collaborates extensively.

They misappropriate the necessary equipment clandestinely from the Bionyne facilities. Unfortunately, William gets desperate when he sees that the company had only three containers, instead of four. So he would not be able to bring all of his four family members back to life. He inscribes in different papers the name of them all, and asks Ed to pick them up, but Ed refuses. Facing a hard choice – since, by force of circumstance, he has to exclude one family member –, William decides to exclude his youngest daughter Zoe. 

So, eventually, he initiates the procedures, taking all the necessary measures to do an impeccable work. Nevertheless, the procedures takes time, and – meanwhile – people from the social circles of his family starts to miss them. His wife, a doctor, is missed at work, the same way his children’s absence at school draws attention. So, William elaborates several excuses, saying that his family is sick. A high school principal visits them at home, and William receives the woman, telling her a similar excuse. He even engages in social midia activity posing as each one of his family members, to give the impression that everything is normal, and they are communicating online frequently. Inevitably, he is so absorbed by his personal endeavor that he became reckless and uninterested in his work at Bionyne. He even asks Ed to elaborate an excuse to justify his absence, so Ed says to Jones (Ortiz), their superior at Bionyne, that William became sick with pneumonia.   

Sad for not being able to bring up Zoe to life, William tries to erase her from their lives, collecting all her belongings – as well as all pictures they had of her in the walls – and throws them into the garbage. After one hour into the film, his wife wakes up, followed by Matt and Sophie. William is exhilarated to find that he is able to replicate human beings, and his best friend Ed celebrates his success with him. 

Initially, all things go well, but the illusion lasts only for a few days. Eventually, Mona has severe memory lapses, that exasperates her. William, disturbed by the hard demands that Jones constantly requests, asking him for immediate results, begins to succumb to pressure. Subsequently, Mona, hardly dealing with her mental and physical distresses, demands from William an explanation, and – feeling he has no alternative –, is obliged to tell her the truth about the accident: except for him, all of them died in a car crash. She is a replica, as well as her two children. When Sophie finds the name Zoe written on her locker, she asks William who Zoe is, and Mona gets disturbed, as she had in her memories glimpses of a child and precisely this same name, that she could not explain properly. So William is forced to reveal to Mona that Zoe was their youngest daughter, that he was unable to bring back to life, due to insufficient equipment.  

One night, Jones appears at the Foster’s residence, and confronts William. He reveals that he had known all from the beginning, having acknowledged that his family died in a car crash. He purposefully let William and Ed stole the equipment from Bionyne for the necessary cloning procedures, knowing that – with his family life at stake – William will have enough motivations to succeed. So Jones implies that the replicas of Mona, Matt and Sophie in fact belong to Bionyne.

Realizing the danger they are in, William manages to hurt Jones badly, and tells his family they have to escape. They embark on their automobile, and William manages to avoid Jone’s henchmen. Nevertheless, they are followed, and soon they suspect they are being monitored, as Mona, Matt and Sophie had tracker devices implanted in every single one of them, and they figure this out. Mona discovers that the electric pulses comes from their hearts, and asks William to drive to the clinic where she works. There – with a heart defibrillator – they destroy the device in all of them, so the signal stops, and the Bionyne mercenaries lose track of the Foster family.

Soon thereafter, William drives to a Marina, to pick up a vessel where he and his family will be able to escape. But when he is in the docs, Mona, Matt and Sophie are kidnapped by Jones’ bodyguards. Assuming that they are heading towards Bionyne, William go there as well, to rescue his family. This was a calculated move on Jones part, that was eager to attract William for a trap. 

Upon arriving there, William tries to negotiate. Displaying his rudeness and selfishness, Jones kills Ed in front of William and Mona. Then Jones demands that William succeeds in transplanting a human conscience into a cybernetic android, something William agrees to do. Unbeknownst to Jones, William had previously configured his own neurological pattern into a digital blueprint, having discovered that he could manipulate deliberately his own mental sequences in order to avoid the cyborg’s rejection of the conscience transplanted. So, while doing the procedures, William configures the android with a replica of his own conscience, ordering him subsequently to attack Jones and the Bionyne security agents. While Jones and his bodyguards are viciously attacked, Mona and the children escape. They are soon followed by William.  

Soon afterwards, we see William and Mona in a paradisiac beach with their children. William is holding hands with a now replicated Zoe. Apparently, everything ends up well for the Foster family. Then we see Jones receiving a man in a wheelchair, in a discreet hotel room, somewhere in the United Arab Emirates. He is driving the business of his dream: to transplant the mind of old and sick people into android machines, enabling them to live indefinitely. Helping him is the android who attacked him earlier, in the Bionyne facilities. The one who has a replica of William Foster’s conscience. 

While this movie is not a spectacularly good one, it’s not a bad one either. You will hardly be impressed, but will neither be disappointed. Overall, it’s a good and entertaining thriller. Definitely, it will make a decent, enjoyable summer flick. As a futuristic movie, Replicas rises important questions concerning human DNA and cloning technology, as well as the morality and ethics concerning these issues. The temptation that large corporations will have to make profit from it will probably dilacerate all the possibilities for this otherwise benign resource to be used for the common good. Beyond these questions, this story – whose screenplay was written and developed by Chad St. John – makes an extensive use of the possibilities allowed by this subject, exploring all that can go wrong when something that should have an altruistic purpose is mainly used for financial gain, and deceitful acquisition of corporate power.  

The desperation that William Foster has – and the moral dilemma he has to confront – is another important issue of the story. When he sees all his family members dead after the accident, he chooses to break his moral engagement to the company where he works, and uses the technology they provide to produce exact replicas of his loved ones. You can say he was not altruistic, or even maybe that a desperate man can resort to anything under certain circumstances to alleviate his pain. 
 

So, this movie has its share of decent qualities, but don’t expect anything too extraordinary. If you like this genre of movie, you will definitely have a satisfactory time watching it. It’s a pragmatic, dynamic and tense futuristic feature film, where survival requires constant diligence and distrust against the outside world. Nevertheless, Replicas wasn’t good enough to avoid exasperating clichés and limitations, that – at least for a few moments – will remind you of generic Prime Time melodramas of Hallmark Channel, or even some low budget, made for television Sci-Fi films. Especially in the family scenes.   

Another problem is the quality of Keanu Reeves acting, that has been declining, and is becoming more and more generic, as the years pass by. Doesn’t matter the movies he’s in, his characters are basically all the same. Don’t get me wrong. Keanu Reeves is a fantastic actor, one of my favorites. But for more than ten years now, he has been involved mostly in unnecessary and even precarious flicks, being too distant from his glorious times of Point Break, Speed, The Matrix and The Devil’s Advocate. His last fantastic movie was 2008 Street Kings, and even then he became involved in questionable films. From then on, he has been involved mostly in low budget and independent productions. His last blockbuster was the deceptive 2013 47 Ronin – after ten years without being cast in one –, a movie with an enormous budget of $175 million, that was one of the biggest box office bombs of the century.  

Another problem is that is very difficult seeing Reeves as a husband, and a father figure (I already have mentioned this some years before, on my review of Knock Knock, as you can read here, and my feelings concerning this roles for him hasn’t changed). He is hardly convincing. To watch him kiss a child, and call him his son, if it is a boy, or his daughter, if it is a girl, is so over the edge. It’s too artificial and implausible; becomes evident that it is just mechanical acting.  

But, if you press the button of your suspension of disbelief, make a blind eye to all the acting deficiencies, the soap opera clichés, and occasionally precarious loopholes into the history – that lacks cohesiveness sometimes –, Replicas still make a good movie. Like I’ve written above, the movie is not bad. It’s a somewhat decent thriller film, despite being regular and ordinary, for the most part. Keep your expectations low, and you will be not disappointed. Or at least, too disappointed. In the end, you will definitely have a moderately reasonable entertainment.   


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. 
​
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! 

Johnny English Strikes Again is the third installment in the Johnny English movie series, starring legendary British icon of humor and stand-up comedy performer Rowan Atkinson. Recently released in my country, I’ve just finished seeing this movie. It’s undoubtedly the weakest in the franchise, though with exceedingly good moments, you can really appreciate, and enjoy some very good laughs in the process. Rowan Atkinson – which is best remembered as the goofy and naïve Mister Bean, a character that he had played for television for five years, from 1990 to 1995, as well as in two movies, Bean, released in 1997, and Mr. Bean's Holiday, released in 2007 – is absolutely marvelous, and despite the fact that this movie is a lot more simple, Johnny English Strikes Again definitely scores a modest degree of satisfaction and competence, though its creative boundaries were far more restricted than the last two installments, Johnny English (2003) and Johnny English Reborn (2011).  

The plot of this movie is quite simple. A hacker invades the system of the British Intelligence Agency, MI7, exposing the identity of all active secret agents. So the British Prime Minister (played by Emma Thompson) demands to her subordinate that an inactive spy should be assigned for the mission. So Johnny English, working then as a school teacher – which is something reminiscent of the previous movie, Johnny English Reborn, where he was assigned to an important mission while he was living as a reclusive monk in a Buddhist monastery in Tibet, being dismissed from the secret service after a failed mission in Mozambique, an incident upon which the audience discovers later wasn’t entirely his fault – is summoned up to resolve the situation. After a reunion where he accidentally blew up an explosive pen, that made other three inactive agents that could possibly join the mission to lose consciousness, English reunites with his former partner, Bough (played by Ben Miller), from the first movie of the franchise. 

After disclosing that the signal came from France, English and Bough drive with an old fashioned Aston Martin – which was deliberately chosen by English for being obsolete and mostly destitute of technological devices –, to the destination where apparently the sign was emitted. Arriving in France, their evidence points towards a luxury vessel, that they try to board incognito, but eventually they are surprised by a seductive woman, that later the audience discovers to be a Russian spy (played by Olga Kurylenko). English and Bough are then imprisoned in a small storage warehouse. To escape, English uses an explosive swab, to break the door. He loses a little his hearing capabilities as a consequence of the explosion, so he begins to scream out loud with Bough, instead of normally speaking. This makes their whereabouts to be discovered by their antagonists, but they manage to run away, albeit very disastrously.    

With no better prospects, English decides that it would be better for them to stalk the woman they had seen in the vessel. They follow her in their vehicle with difficulty throughout the sinuous roads of the countryside, and eventually gets out of fuel, something for which English blames Bough. But then the woman comes back in her own vehicle, politely approaches the two men – like if they had never met before – and Johnny English introduces himself with a fake name, Basil Golightly. Very conveniently, English tells Bough that going out of fuel was a deliberately calculate idea that he had. Bough then pushes the car until they arrive at the hotel, where, a few hours later, English and the Russian spy meet at the bar. 

While English interacts with her, Bough investigates her hotel room. Soon thereafter, Bough informs English that he found in her possessions three fake passports and ammunition. But English – then smitten by her –, denies the possibility, and tells Bough that he is just being paranoid. Later, we see the secret Russian spy receiving orders to kill English.

Later that night, English, unable to sleep, takes some stimulant pills, and heads towards the dance floor. There, he meets again the Russian spy, and they start to dance. She tries several different strategies to kill him, but inadvertently fails in all of them. Meanwhile, the British Prime Minister is eager to form a deal with a mysterious and dubious American billionaire from the Silicon Valley. Eventually, English discovers and informs one of his superiors that the American billionaire may be the culprit behind the infiltration of the MI7’s system.

Soon thereafter, one of the MI7’s operatives introduces English to a virtual reality simulator, that can duplicate the interior of the billionaire’s mansion. This lesson will prepare English for the real operation. Bough and the MI7 employee leave English alone, and he activates the glasses, but forgets to do the same with the platform. So, while enjoying the perception of the simulator – and believing himself to be in the premises of the agency –, English actually went outside, and hurt a lot of citizens in the vicinities of the secret service offices. Coincidentally, he returns exactly from where he departed, never realizing what he did. When he finishes the exercise, he is joined again by Bough and the MI7 employee. Bough then sees by the window ambulances, police and a lot of confusion, imagining what has really happened. 

English subsequently really invades the mansion of the billionaire, and there encounters again the Russian spy. Rapidly, both get caught, but – in an intelligent maneuver – the Russian spy fakes to have intercepted English. English starts to boast about having reinforcement outside, but the billionaire starts laughing hysterically when, by camera, he sees only Bough, desperately running away from his dogs.  

Eventually, English manages to scape. When he learns that a meeting of the G12 will take place in Scotland, English decides that he must go there as well. Bough, upon learning this, recruits the help of his wife – that is a Navy official –, and all of them go to Scotland in a submarine.

Meanwhile, the billionaire and the Russian spy are talking to each other, and he reveals to her that he knows exactly who she is. She tries to shoot him, but, without her knowledge, he already had emptied her firearm, which makes her easily vulnerable to him. When he is about to kill her, English, using a special suit – strategically operated by Bough from distance, by remote control –, appears and saves hear. Unfortunately, a suspender device gets stuck by the window, and when English tells Bough to deactivate the suit, a slingshot effect pulls him directly into the ocean. So, the billionaire uses this chance to escape, and attend the meeting. 

To access the castle where the G12 summit will take place, English and Bough infiltrate into a celebratory march, disguised as Scottish traditional folk musicians. In the G12 summit, the billionaire – upon presenting a proposal that could solve the major problems of all the countries in attendance –, reveals that he will only collaborate, if he can exert complete control over all their respective government’s strategic information. To prove what he is willing to do, the billionaire cuts the internet of Western Europe, which brings chaos and instability to half of the continent.   

Then English, wearing a medieval armor, interrupts the reunion. Unfortunately, he slides in the oil that runs from the armor, as he had previously put in the belt an absurd quantity, in a futile attempt to take it off. Then, the billionaire uses the opportunity to try to escape one more time.  Nevertheless, English – tough in a very slow move, because of the armor’s heavy weight –, and with the primary help of Bough, intercepts the billionaire, exactly when he was about to embark in a helicopter. English has the mobile computer that could deactivate the helicopter, but the billionaire mocks him, saying that he would never be able to decipher how to use it. English then throws the mobile computer, hitting the billionaire in the head, and leaving him unconscious, thus saving Europe and the G12 countries from the megalomaniac domination plan of the evil corporatist. 

With the mission accomplished, English returns to his work as a school teacher, though – as was shown already in the beginning of the movie – he was far more devoted in instructing his students about lessons on how to be a secret agent, than teaching them the ordinary curricular grade.

Like I highlighted above, this is probably the weakest movie in the franchise, but it is not bad. Not at all. If your expectations are not too high, you can definitely have a good time watching it. Johnny English Strikes Again is a very decent continuation of the franchise. In fact, I hope a fourth instalment would be released in the future – not in the near future, of course, if we realized the gaps between all the movies are too damn extensive: the first, Johnny English, was released fifteen years ago, in 2003, while the second movie, Johnny English Reborn, was released eight years later, in 2011, and another seven years would pass, for the release of this third film. This is not a monumental or extravagant movie, especially if compared to its predecessors. But if you like a good comedy-action movie with a goofy central character conceived as an intelligent parody of James Bond, than Johnny English Strikes Again definitely is worthwhile watching it.   


​Wagner

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

Craig Sheffer is a formidable example of a terrific and exceedingly talented actor, that never had his breakthrough in the movie industry, although he has somewhat managed to have a stable career, which is something that – especially in the extremely competitive field of work that is the motion picture industry – definitely is quite an achievement. Sheffer has had major roles in movies, being the lead in some very interesting and peculiar films, but he was never able to become the star that, given his amazing talent, credibility and superb dedication to the profession, he certainly deserved to be. 

Well, first of all, life is not always fair. We all – or, at least, most of us – have a great amount of talents, but this fact doesn’t mean people will recognize our potentialities or even the amazing results we are able to achieve. Everybody are busy with their own lives, and people doesn’t have the obligation of recognizing our capabilities. Unfortunately, this was the case for Craig Sheffer, that never managed to capture the attention of great studio executives, nor had someone willing to give him a major opportunity.    

Craig Sheffer, unfortunately, from the beginning of his career, has fallen into a sordid loophole of very low budget movies, and was never able to break into the mainstream. He was buried into the blank space of B-movies, made for television films, and independent low budget flicks that nobody ever saw, and never managed to get out of this sordid limbo, like the vast majority of his work colleagues in the American movie industry.  

In 1984, he starred in Voyage of the Rock Aliens, a rock musical movie, that Sheffer himself probably is willing to forget. In 1990, he achieved a moderate degree of notoriety after starring as the main character in the movie Nightbreed, an adaption of a literary work by British author Clive Barker, that also directed the film. 

The only great big budget production of Sheffer’s career – on which he had a relevant role – was the 1992 movie A River Runs Through It, directed by Robert Redford. On this movie, Sheffer played real life character Norman Maclean, a celebrated American writer, whose eponymous literary narrative – published in the book A River Runs Through It and Other Stories – was the inspiration for the movie. On this film, Sheffer has worked with a then yet to become famous Brad Pitt, whose character was Paul Maclean, Norman Maclean’s brother. A then unknown Joseph Gordon-Levitt – which was also destined to become a notable actor – also appears, as a younger version of Norman Maclean.

A River Runs Through It was the only performance of Sheffer in a major motion picture. In 1993, Sheffer starred in the B-movie Fire on the Amazon, on which he divided the screen with Sandra Bullock, that also would become a celebrated and notorious actress. 

My favorite Craig Sheffer movie was, undoubtedly, Hellraiser: Inferno, released in 2000. On it, Sheffer plays a bright, methodic and highly intelligent, but also deceitful, corrupt and immoral Denver police detective named Joseph Thorne. Another adaptation of a work by Clive Barker, I saw this movie several times – and in my opinion –, this was one of the most incredible films that I ever saw. 

The plot concerns the discovery of a bizarre puzzle box by the main character, in a ritualistic crime scene investigation. After also discovering a finger, the detective finds himself on the trail of a deranged criminal mastermind, known only as the Engineer. Thorne then undertakes a massive investigation into the underworld, in an obsessed pursue to capture the Engineer, to stop his depraved, hostile and sadistic crime spree, but also seeking to do something good, in a desperate attempt to redeem himself for his evil deeds, as his troubled conscience begins to be a significant burden on him, a natural consequence for all his past malevolent deeds, contraventions and wrongdoings, like being a bad husband, an absent father for his little daughter, and an immorally indulgent police officer.  

As he succeeds in his journey, he begins to find more and more fingers, only to suffer from macabre hallucinatory delusions, and then being forced to confront the fact that he is being tormented by an extraordinary and exceedingly hostile supernatural entity, which is later revealed to be Pinhead, played by actor Doug Bradley. The movie also stars Nicholas Turturro as Tony Nenonen, the police partner of Joseph Thorne, and James Remar as a psychiatrist who at first seems willing to help Thorne, but then reveals himself an ambiguous and dual character. For me, this was definitely the most intriguing and pervasive character Sheffer has ever played, and the most amazing film of his career.

Nevertheless, Sheffer is undoubtedly best remembered today as Keith Scott, the cool and light-hearted uncle of Lucas – Chad Michael Murray’s character –, on The WB hit show One Three Hill. On this series, Sheffer played a very serene, comprehensive and sensible individual, who constantly antagonizes with his brother Dan, Lucas biological father, played by Paul Johansson. 

Lucas is constantly rejected and humiliated by his father, who shows unconditional preference for his other son, Nathan, played by James Lafferty. Nathan is Lucas’ half-brother, but he also displays towards Lucas the same amount of despise his father does. By virtue of this troubled familial relationships, Keith always tries to support Lucas, offering him the kind and gentle support his father never wanted to show him. Keith also had a crush on Karen, Lucas’ mother, played by Moira Kelly, but his love was never reciprocated.

Throughout the years, the relationships of the characters severely changed. Lucas and Nathan eventually became best friends – bonded not only by their consanguineous connection, by also by their mutual love of college basketball – and Nathan eventually married Hailey, Lucas’ best friend, played by actress Bethany Joy Lenz. Eventually, Lucas also reconciled with his father, and the two became close.

The series was a very emotional and beautiful one. Although I was never an ardent enthusiast, it was a very good show, and I watched several episodes along the years, when was broadcast by Fox Television Network, here in my country.  

Sheffer was a regular on the series throughout the seasons from 2003 to 2007, and then was removed from the show, when his character was killed. He made special guest appearances in the 2012 season.  

Another films of his career that may be interesting to mention was 1999 Turbulence 2: Fear of Flying, 2000 Without Malice, on which he co-starred with the late Corey Haim, and 2004 Berseker, on which he co-starred with his One Three Hill colleague Paul Johansson. In 2008, he had a very small role as Kenneth, the cruel and abusive husband of Della Myers – Kim Basinger’s character – in the thriller While She Was Out. 

In 2012, he starred in the movie The Mark, alongside Eric Roberts. He reprised the role in a sequel, 2013 The Mark 2: Redemption. His last work to date was 2016 Code of Honor, on which he shared the screen with action film star Steven Segal. 

Throughout his career, Sheffer has worked with several notable actors and actresses that already were – or would become later – famous, while his talent, on the contrary, was never properly appreciated nor recognized in the movie and television industries. Like I wrote above, he managed to have a stable career, but he never achieved the level of fame and recognition he certainly deserved, that would be satisfactorily proportional to his talent, dedication and creativity. 

The main reason behind this problem was the fact that rarely he was offered something relevant outside the zone of low budget B-movies or television films. When this was the case, it was usually small roles. Never able to break outside the marginal niche of work upon which he became confined, Sheffer remained doomed to take whatever roles were offered to him, never having the opportunity to display his marvelous acting skills in a wide, more elegant, sophisticated and consistent scale. Unfortunately, he remained relegated to works situated in the sidewalk corners of the industry, and thus, became permanently ignored by major studios executives. ​


​Wagner