In this supernatural horror tale based on a Korean ritual, a woman entertains a macabre marriage offer that would let her pursue her dreams, for better or for much much worse.
It’s Horror Short Sunday, and today we take a look at Koreatown Ghost Story. When a young woman, Hannah, visits a friend of her deceased parents, she finds herself in a rather painful situation (both metaphorically and literally) and what appears to be a good deal proves to be anything but. Fun and suspenseful, and here’s a little fun fact too: the house Hannah passes by in the beginning, is the house used in AHS: Murder House.
Director: Minsun Park, Teddy Tenenbaum Writer: Minsun Park, Teddy Tenenbaum Country & year: USA, 2021 Actors: Margaret Cho, Lyrica Okano, Brandon Halvorsen, Minsun Park IMDb:www.imdb.com/title/tt14214082/
High Tension is the title and high tension is what you get.
We’re in the countryside in France (here, of course, filmed in Romania) where the two young best friends Marie (Cécile de France) and Alex (Maïwenn) are visiting Alex’ parents to study. It all seems like a quiet and idyllic summer in the country, but who’d know that a psycho killer (Philippe Nahon) is also roaming the area? He’s dressed like a mechanic, drives around in a rusty van and likes to chill out between the killing-sprees by giving himself a blowjob with a fresh severed head. Welcome to surfing on the first red wave of French Extreme Horror.
After this short and intense foreshadowing, it’s just a matter of time before this cold-blooded and emotionless serial killer drops by Alex’ family’s farmhouse to expand his kill count. And so he does. Already the first night when all have gone to bed, the doorbell rings. As soon as Alex’ dad opens, he gets his face sliced by a razor blade. Then our killer cuts his head off in some very creative way I won’t even try to describe. He slaughters the whole family like they were pigs, even the dog. Before he leaves the messy and gruesome murder scene, he captures Alex, ties her up, tosses her back in the van. Phew. Marie was able to hide during this brutal home invasion, but chases the killer to save Alex.
What we have next is an intense cat n’ mouse chase that spirals completely out of control. Alexandre Aja (with his co-writer Grégory Levasseur) has during the last twenty years established themselves in the US with The Hills Have Eyes, Piranha 3D, Mirrors, Crawl, Horns and more. He was 22 years old when he made High Tension, and with this being his first horror film, one would guess he’d already made genre films for a decade. A solidly made slasher, a gory, relentless ride from start to finish, with strong performances by the two female lead actors. The throwbacks to the 70s and 80s are also eminent and the juicy special effects are a big factor here, delivered by FX artist Giannetto De Rossi (1941-2021) who also worked with Lucio Fulci.
But the film also has a rotten macaron in the room that has to be addressed, and that’s the infamous twist which only M. Night Shyamalan would still be impressed by. Aja took inspiration from the Dean R. Koontz’ novel Intensity, which also became an obscure movie made for TV in 1997. And what he had planned for High Tension was all another than the ending we got here. We can blame none other than Luc Besson, one of the producers, who demanded the twist that has aged like milk. But since Aja already here has proven to be a damn good director and able to keep the tension high to the end credits, it does not ruin the the overall film experience.
Director: Alexandre Aja Writers: Alexandre Aja, Grégory Levasseur Original title: Haute tension Also known as: Switchblade Romance (UK) Country & year: France/Romania, 2003 Actors: Cécile de France, Maïwenn, Philippe Nahon, Franck Khalfoun, Andrei Finti, Oana Pellea, Marco Claudiu Pascu, Jean-Claude de Goros, Bogdan Uritescu, Gabriel Spahiu IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338095/
Julia is married to Francis, who has a mother from Romania but grew up in USA. One day, he gets a promotion at work and is relocated to Bucharest, so it’s time to pack the bags and move to Romania. They move into an apartment building where the windows face the opposite building. Julia spends a lot of time on her own as Francis works long hours, and she gets more and more unnerved by seeing a man in the building across the street, who just stands there and appears to be watching her all the time. Her fears aren’t exactly subsided when she and Francis one day comes over a commotion on the street with an ambulance, police and a crowd of people. Apparently they just found the body of another victim of “The Spider“, a serial killer who decapitates young women. Like this wasn’t more than enough to fray her nerves, she’s also struggling with finding her place in a city where she doesn’t know anyone, and doesn’t speak the language. She befriends one of the few english-speaking neighbors, Irina, which appears to ease her mind a little. One night, when she stands looking out the window, the “watcher“ is at his usual place. She wonders if he actually is looking at her, hoping she might be wrong, and decides to test it by gently waving at him. At first, the man just stands there like he hasn’t seen anything, but then he waves back. And things spiral into something that’s completely out of Julia’s control.
Watcher is a psychological thriller from 2022, written and directed by Chloe Okuno as her feature directorial debut. It was filmed in Bucharest, Romania. The movie is based on an original screenplay by Zack Ford, and stars Maika Monroe as Julia, Karl Glusman as Francis, and Burn Gorman as the watcher. It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival and was later theatrically released in the US, mostly to positive reviews. It still only made a total of $3.2 million against a budget of $5 million.
The movie follows a woman who moves to a new country with her husband, feeling alienated and alone in unfamiliar surroundings. The language barrier only adds to the feeling of being alone, and with her husband being so busy at work she hardly knows how to pass the time and make herself fit in within a world not quite her own. The pacing is slow (yep, another slow-burner), but it gives you enough time to get a proper grip on the isolation and paranoia that builds within the protagonist. You also can’t help but wondering if Julia is just a bit too paranoid for her own good: what is a real threat, and what is caused by her misconceptions and fear? When she’s standing in the window watching the watcher…then who is actually watching who? Yes, the movie does play along with the idea of making you question everything, but we also experience everything Julia does, positioning us in the same isolation she feels and with the same experiences. Thus, we do not necessarily question that something is wrong here, we just don’t know to what extent, and this makes it all the more thrilling.
Watcher is a suspenseful movie filled with paranoia and anxiety, and definitely worth a watch if you want a slow-burning mystery thriller.
Fun fact: when Julia wanders around in Bucharest and decides to visit the Cinema, she watches Charade (1963). It’s the same movie that was played in It Follows (2014) when Jay (played by Maika Monroe) and Greg went to the movies together.
Director: Chloe Okuno Writers: Zack Ford, Chloe Okuno Country & year: USA/Romania, 2022 Actors: Maika Monroe, Karl Glusman, Burn Gorman, Tudor Petrut, Gabriela Butuc, Madalina Anea, Cristina Deleanu, Bogdan Farcas, Daniel Nuta, Ioana Abur, Flaviu Crisan, Stefan Iancu IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12004038/
Two bunny girls get in trouble when a new customer turns out to be a monster!
On this Horror Short Sunday, we move into the world of claymation and take a look at Chainsaw Bunny, made by Takena Nagao who’s got a YouTube channel with several more videos showcasing his clay animation talent. It’s fun and gory, and how could you possibly go wrong with bunny girls wielding a chainsaw and axe? Enjoy!
Maiden Woods is a small, isolated town surrounded by forest. We start off with a team of loggers that goes missing, and when the foreman tries to find out what happened to them, he encounters the body of one of them. Or, that is…a part of it. Upon finding a severed arm, he is then attacked and killed by some kind of unseen monster. Later, Paul Shields who is the sheriff in town goes together with Donny Saunders, his new deputy from New York, to speak to a farmer who insists that one of his horses has been stolen. Paul believes that the horse has simply escaped and decides to not think too much of it, and goes on to pick up his son Adam who will stay at his place for the night. He and his wife, Susan, no longer lives together after their other son, Tim, died in an accident. During the night, Adam claims he’s seen a creature in the back yard, and Paul also hears some strange noises but doesn’t see anything. The next morning, there are large hoof-like footprints in the snow around his house. Shouldn’t be too strange since they live nearby a forest and all that, but what’s quite peculiar is that the footprints appear to come from an animal that walks on two legs. On top of that, the footprints are left all around town. Paul, of course, believes it to be a prank. What else could it be, right? But then he hears about more animals that have gone missing, and the hunters informs him that all the deer and other animals in the forest seems to have left, indicating that some kind of large predator may have come to the area.
Dark Was the Night (released as Monster Hunter in the UK) is a creature feature horror film from 2014 directed by Jack Heller and written by Tyler Hisel. It is loosely based on the story about “The Devil’s Footprints“, a phenomenon that occurred in 1855 in England where people in a small town woke up to find biped hoof prints all over the place in the freshly fallen snow. Also, the title of the film addresses the 1927 blues-folk song Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground by Blind Willie Johnson.
What sets the movie apart from many typical creature feature films, is the focus on mystery-fueled horror suspense during the majority of the playtime. It’s kind of a slow-burn, the monster is lurking in the dark and out of sight and the atmosphere is much more sinister and dark than the simple premise would make you expect. Hiding the monster is actually a good thing here, as it works wonders for creating the creepy tone. Kevin Durand, which was most recently seen in a role in the vampire horror movie Abigail (2024), does a good job on portraying a worn out and drained sheriff who’s had more than enough on his plate as of late, only to be dealing with something quite out of his comprehension.
And night surely is dark in this movie! And the day is…blue. Just as blue as the sheriff who looks like he’s on the verge of a breakdown at any moment. To be honest, I’m not really sure what the deal with the color palette is, but I have a feeling it’s used to somehow enhance the emotional state of the characters, or to provide a feeling of it being chilly since it’s set during the winter time.
Unfortunately, the movie does fall a bit apart during the final moments, mostly due to the rather lackluster reveal of the monster (could have been a cool game boss, but as something scary in a horror movie, not so much), and a somewhat cheesy ending. Overall, though, Dark Was the Night is a decent mystery-fueled creature feature film.
Director: Jack Heller Writer: Tyler Hisel Also known as: Monster Hunter (UK) Country & year: USA, 2014 Actors: Kevin Durand, Lukas Haas, Bianca Kajlich, Nick Damici, Heath Freeman, Ethan Khusidman, Sabina Gadecki, Steve Agee, Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum, Billy Paterson, Terry Fiore IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2251281/
Rain Carradine is an orphan who works with her adoptive brother Andy at the mining colony Jackson’s star. Andy is a reprogrammed synthetic human, whose only mission is to do what’s best for Rain. As can be expected, the mining colony is a shithole that treats its workers like slaves, and when Rain’s contract is unexpectedly extended, she’s had enough and wants out of the place in whatever way possible. Tyler, her ex-boyfriend and some of their fellow friends have found a derelict spacecraft nearby, and they decide to go on a salvage mission in order to retrieve the cryonic stasis chambers before others beat them to it. They all want to leave and travel to a planet called Yvaga, and together they fly a mining hauler to what they find is an abandoned research station called Romulus and Remus. Of course it proves to not be so abandoned after all, which is revealed when two of them are trying to retrieve some stasis chambers in a room filled with facehuggers. This inevitably leads to one of them getting an unwanted facial, which again leads to, well…you know what. All hell breaks lose and they must avoid both facehuggers and Xenomorphs while also having a time limit as the space station is getting closer to crashing with Jackson’s planetary rings.
Alien: Romulus is a sci-fi horror action film from 2024, co-written and directed by Fede Alvarez. It is the seventh installment in the Alien franchise, but it serves as a standalone “interquel” which is set in a timeline between the events of the first Alien film from 1979, and Aliens from 1986. It doesn’t take too many glances before you realize how it is definitely a love letter to the original movie from 1979, and Fede Alvarez even sought out the special effects crew from the 1986 movie to have them work on the creatures. Thus, the movie includes physical sets, practical creatures and miniatures which were used wherever possible. The animatronic effects were created in collaboration with Legacy Effects and Studio Gillis, where Legacy Effects is the successor to Stan Winston Studios, who worked on the 1986 film Aliens, and Studio Gillis is the successor to Amalgamated Dynamics, who worked on Alien 3 (1992) and Alien: Resurrection (1997). Aside from that, Fede Alvarez was also inspired by the video game Alien: Isolation from 2014, a game he played around the same time as his movie Don’t Breathe (2016) was released, and said: “I was playing, and realizing how terrifying Alien could be if you take it back to that tone“. So, yeah, there’s definitely a lot of love for the original movie and the franchise here. Is it nostalgic? Yeah, of course it fuckin’ is, and no, that’s not a bad thing.
The characters are much younger than in earlier Alien movies, none of them are fully fleshed out but it works well enough and makes them all moderately interesting. The interaction between Rain and her “brother”, Andy the artificial human, gives the movie a bit more heart without trying too desperately to pull on your heartstrings. The gore (although there isn’t any abundance of it) is decent, and the visuals and atmosphere are good. The use of practical effects though is very much the icing on the cake in this movie, and oh boy does some of those effects show the obvious rape analogies with phallic and yonic designs all over the place. A scene where a Xenomorph emerges from what I could best describe as an enormous slime-vagina on the wall, showing its phallic head in full display, very much leaves little to your imagination and if you’re one of those who never saw these obvious phallic designs in earlier Alien movies, then, well…here you have it. Now you cannot unsee it. Then again, if you’ve ever seen some of H. R. Giger’s other works (the guy who was responsible for the visual design of the creatures in the 1979 Alien film) you shouldn’t be too surprised over its obvious sexual undertones.
Overall, I thought Alien: Romulus was a blast when viewing it in the theater, and while it was nowhere near as bloody and gory as Fede Alvarez’s Evil Dead (2013), it was fun and felt as one of the Alien movies as of late that gave much of the same feeling of claustrophobia and unsettling atmosphere as the first.
Oh, and if you want more Alien, check out the impressive animated fanmade horror short Alien: Monday which was also released this year after having been in production for 6 years!
Director: Fede Alvarez Writers: Fede Alvarez, Rodo Sayagues Country & year: USA, UK, 2024 Actors: Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced, Spike Fearn, Aileen Wu, Rosie Ede, Soma Simon, Bence Okeke, Viktor Orizu, Robert Bobroczkyi, Trevor Newlin IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18412256/
A young girl’s brother returns from war with a most disturbing souvenir.
It’s Horror Short Sunday, and today we take a look at what’s wrong with Robbie in Robbie Ain’t Right No More. No one is “right in the head” after coming back from war, there will always be wounds and scars both internal and external that will never heal. Robbie, though, has brought something more than just PTSD back home with him…
Suspenseful and creepy, this horror short is well worth a watch!
Director: Kyle Perritt Writer: Kyle Perritt Country & year: USA, 2023 Actors: Madeleine McGraw, Jadon Cal, Jason Davis, Walker Trull, Revell Carpenter, Mary Emily Deal, Gregory L. Wilson II, Terrence Little Gardenhigh, Isaac Vickers IMDb:www.imdb.com/title/tt26316419/
We start off with a security guard running through a subway station, and upon entering a room and seeing his reflection in a mirror, he starts freaking out and begs for his life. This doesn’t end well, as his reflection takes a shard and cuts its own throat, and the same thing happens to him. Then we move over to the life of Ben Carson (Kiefer Sutherland) who is a suspended police detective on mandatory leave from the New York police department after a shooting that went terribly wrong. Now, he works as a security guard and will start working at the Mayflower, which is a luxury department store that was destroyed by a fire five years earlier. And of course: the building has a vast array of mirrors still standing from when the store was open. How convenient. On his first night of patrol, he notices eerie things like how the mirrors are covered with handprints which seems to be from the other side of the glass. Couldn’t be anything suspicious about that, right? He also finds the wallet of the guard we saw in the opening scene, who he was told had killed himself. Inside the wallet is a note saying “Esseker”. He starts seeing more and more visions, and Ben becomes convinced that the mirrors play a part in what is happening here. And when his sister is also killed by her own reflection, Ben is fueled by rage and fear for his family’s safety, and becomes determined to figure out the mystery behind the mirrors and the mysterious note in the previous guard’s wallet.
Mirrors is a supernatural horror film from 2008, directed by Alexandre Aja (High Tension, Piranha 3D, Crawl). The film is based on a South Korean horror film from 2003 called Into the Mirror, and it was originally supposed to be a straightforward remake until Aja was brought on board to read the script, which he then wanted to change as he was quite dissatisfied with the particulars of the original film’s story. Thus, Mirrors only includes the basic idea involving mirrors. It was shot in Romania, most of it in Nicolae Ceausescu’s unfinished Academy of sciences which is located in Bucharest.
Abandoned places and spooky mirrors is of course a fine setup for a horror movie, merged with a protagonist who is troubled, divorced and having an alcohol problem (funny how those things always go hand in hand) we are left with what will inevitably not bring much new to the table, but at least it will offer some good creepy atmosphere and a mystery that keeps you intrigued enough to keep watching. Another plus is that there’s some really effective scenes, especially that of the sister’s death. If you watch this movie with some of the directors other gorier and grittier movies in mind, however, this one’s very different. There’s none of the really gritty vibe which can be found in High Tension for example, or any abundance of gore like in the incredibly gory Piranha 3D. This one’s a different meal, and Aja’s movies does indeed come in varied forms, you can rarely expect the same thing over and over from him. Which is not a bad thing.
Overall, Mirrors is a nice supernatural horror film where Jack Bauer, uhm, I mean Kiefer Sutherland plays the role as the alcoholic ex-cop pretty well. The best part of the movie is when everything is still a mystery, as the creepy vibe does diminish a bit once the supernatural goings-on are revealed, but this isn’t exactly uncommon in mystery-fueled horror movies. I have also seen the original movie this one was based on, and this is one of the (rare) cases where I actually prefer the re-imagined version. This is probably largely due to this movie being a re-imagination rather than a remake.
A sequel, called Mirrors 2, was released in 2010.
Director: Alexandre Aja Writers: Alexandre Aja, Grégory Levasseur Country & year: USA, 2008 Actors: Kiefer Sutherland, Paula Patton, Cameron Boyce, Arika Gluck, Amy Smart, Mary Beth Peil, John Shrapnel, Jason Flemyng, Tim Ahern, Julian Glover IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0790686/
We start off in a dark, dark forest, where a boy keeps running in fear. He’s deathly afraid of something or someone, and when he runs across a forest road he doesn’t see the trailer truck coming in high speed. Luckily, the truck misses him, but the driver lose control over the vehicle and it all triggers a chain of events when the truck crashes into another car. Then, we proceed forwards in time and over to Kai Koss, who has returned to his hometown to settle affairs after his mother’s recent death. It’s been 19 years since he set foot there because of his mother’s abusive ways, but he soon finds out that he can’t outrun his past. In his ancestral house, he starts getting visions of previous events and it messes him up to the point where he actually wants to burn the entire shithole of a house down. Some local police makes sure he won’t be able to do that, though. But this revisit to his old hometown doesn’t only bring back memories, people start dying too…and it seems like something has been waiting for Kai’s return.
Hidden (original title: Skjult) is a psychological horror film from Norway, written and directed by Pål Øie. It had a budget of 12.6 million NOK (approx. 1.2 million USD), and was filmed on several locations in Norway including Eidfjord in Hardanger, by Vøringsfossen (the 83rd highest waterfall in Norway). It received mostly lukewarm reviews, but got some international attention as one of the featured films of the After Dark Horrorfest in 2010.
Hidden often has a few lynchian vibes in it, being slightly dreamlike and nightmarish. The dark and brooding atmosphere is what holds the movie up, and they really found a creepy location for Kai’s old childhood home, a place that pretty much seemed just as tainted by degeneracy as the former owner. When we follow the protagonist in his mostly befuddled state, the movie makes it very clear that the intention is to confuse us on the same level as the character himself. The distinction between what’s real and what’s just in Kai’s mind, can appear a bit messy at times.
Overall, Hidden is perhaps a bit too clichéd, but on the whole it is an okay psychological horror slow-burner, focusing for the most part on atmospheric surroundings and a nightmare-vibe riddled with guilt, confusion and trauma. The cinematography is a highlight here, and you will most likely find it enjoyable if you like mystery horror of the slow and moody type.
The director, Pål Øie, had his first horror movie release with Villmark in 2003 (english title: Dark Woods), which was a fine horror thriller that unfortunately got a rather lackluster sequel in 2015. After that there wasn’t anything new in the horror department from this director, until recently when a new movie titled Kraken was announced. It’s going to be Norway’s first sea monster horror film. Hopefully it will be fun, with at least some grisly body counts and proper monster effects! Time will show, though.
Writer and director: Pål Øie Country & year: Norway, 2009 Original title: Skjult Actors: Kristoffer Joner, Cecilie A. Mosli, Bjarte Hjelmeland, Marko Iversen Kanic, Anders Danielsen Lie, Karin Park, Eivind Sander, Arthur Berning, Agnes Karin Haaskjold IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1347007/
A kaleidoscopic vision portraying mankind’s first meeting with alien life, told through faux archival footage combined with practical FX, miniatures and old school in-camera trickery.
Another Horror Short Sunday again, and today we travel yet again into some cosmic horror territory with From.Beyond by Fredrik S. Hana, the same director behind Autumn Harvest and Sister Hell. This one is much more experimental, and the director himself stated that “I wanted to make something that captured a particular sense of wonder I experienced a lot as a child. A time where the Patterson–Gimlin footage of Bigfoot caused many sleepless nights, and just the thought of space and U.F.O’s filled me with a strange feeling of limitless possibilities. This feeling is rooted in a fascination for the unknown, sprinkled with existential dread and ambiguity, and has been a big source of inspiration to me. I try to stay connected with these emotions in my work, but I never had the chance to truly explore them until now“. And the result is a bizarre and nightmarish analog horror short!
Director: Fredrik S. Hana Writer: Fredrik S. Hana, Jamie Turville Country & year: Norway, 2022 Actors: Espen Hana, Linda Tveiten, Thomas Aske Berg, Asbjørn R. Halsten IMDb:www.imdb.com/title/tt21347706/
