An exhausted nurse must fight for her life when a monster invades her home, but as fear takes over, she makes a devastating choice that will haunt her forever.
Horror Short Sunday is here again, and this time we’re taking a look at Help, a fun horror short with a twist!
Director: Collin Black
Writer: Erin Bechler, Collin Black
Country & year: US, 2026
Actors: Erin Bechler, Stephen Cormier, Jim Cummings, Chris Herring, Mélia Lisette
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt37894791/
For this year’s shark week special, we’ll start off with the biggest fish of them all, the ultimate shark horror movie. The one and only movie that scared people away from the beaches and even lakes and swimming pools (!). It scared the bejeezus out of a lot of people, and some even carries that galeophobia to this day. Yes, we’re of course talking about Jaws from 1975, an instant classic when it came and still remains one, directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the 1974 novel by Peter Benchley. While Psycho made people afraid of showers, Jaws made people afraid of the ocean.
The story starts off in the New England beach town of Amity Island, and we are presented with the first kill almost immediately. A group of young people are partying at the beach, and one of the girls decide to go for a late night swim, while her too intoxicated boyfriend drunkenly collapses and passes out in the sand before being able to join her. Lucky for him, as we soon see her pulled underwater and dragged around like a ragdoll. By what, we don’t see, but of course we have a hunch. Next morning, her partial remains are found washed up on the beach, and when the coroner concludes that this is caused by a shark attack, police chief Martin Brody wants to close the beaches for people’s safety. But, oh no…that won’t do, since the town’s summer economy would suffer! Mayor Larry Vaughn won’t have any of such nonsense, of course. So what happens next is that everything is swept under the rug, no shark here, false alarm, fake news, probably a boating accident. Then the young boy Alex Kintner is killed at a crowded beach, where everyone gets the pleasure or watching nature’s brutality at its finest. And now, of course, it’s time to take it seriously enough to put a bounty on the shark, causing a full-frenzied amateur shark hunting by the local fishermen. Soon afterwards, some of them catches a tiger shark, and the Mayor once again declares the beaches safe. Ding-Dong, the shark is dead! Or maybe not. Slicing it open, there are no human remains inside its stomach. It’s also not as big as the presumed culprit should be, which is more likely to be a great white shark of the much larger kind.
And yes, much of the plot’s key points have been copied, referenced, and parodized numerous times over the years: a giant killer shark (or other creature) plus a town not wanting to take it seriously because of tourist money and local traditions, or something similar. It’s a no-brainer that a movie’s huge success will always make people try to copy it, and there’s no doubt that Jaws has inspired numerous shark and creature feature movies, and continues to do so, because there’s just so much it got right. One of those things include Spielberg’s decision to use lesser known actors. He said that actors who were more anonymous would help the audience find it more believable, as “stars bring a lot of memories along with them, and those memories can sometimes … corrupt the story“. True words. Besides, we all know that the real star here is the shark anyway, so…
Originally, this was actually not meant to be a Steven Spielberg film at all. John Sturges was first considered as director, then it went to Dick Richards instead, but he was dropped from the project. One of the reasons was apparently that he had a habit of describing the shark as a whale…I guess he mistook it for a Moby Dick story. Steven Spielberg became aware of the position and really, really wanted the job, and it all ended with the producers signing him to direct. The producers actually also wanted to train a great white shark for the movie. Uh…yeah, nope. Of course that was not possible, so that’s where “Bruce“ came into the works, which were three full-size pneumantically powered prop sharks. And the film crew nicknamed the shark props after Spielberg’s lawyer Bruce Ramer. Fun spin on the old phrase “all lawyers are sharks”.
The movie was shot mostly on location at Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. It was also the first major motion picture to be shot on the ocean, and yeah…the production was troubled where both the budget and schedules went to shit. To top it all, the main star of the movie, Bruce himself (the mechanical shark) malfunctioned all the time, causing Spielberg to focus more on the shark’s ominous presence than showing it very often. Which may very well have been art by accident, as this movie is definitely an excellent example of how less is more when it comes to showing off the “monster“. Add to it the excellent theme by John Williams, which has become so iconic you’ve probably heard it even if you haven’t seen the movie, and you’ve got the shark’s threatening presence in just a minimalist theme song. That’s no small feat. And despite being a movie that doesn’t show the “monster“ all too often, it doesn’t drown in loads of unnecessary subplots or character interaction that doesn’t drive the story further (which can be an issue in some creature features). The pacing is really good, there’s a constant sinister vibe overlaying the movie due to the shark’s elusive presence. And of course, we have some kill scenes which are really well done.
I’ll admit, Jaws holds a special place in my heart as one of the very first movies to actually scare me. Like, literally. I saw it at a very young age, and as someone growing up in a coastal town where boat life and spending time nearby the ocean and fishing during the summer was a way of my normal everyday life, the idea of a giant shark prowling underneath the waves literally scared the piss out of me. Most of the other horror movies I’d seen was too fantastical and removed from reality to really give me any “but what if“ impact. And while there aren’t even any great whites here in Norway, and the only shark species that roam the Norwegian waters are no threat to humans, it still instilled a deep-rooted fear in me which persisted. At the same time I also got fascinated by sharks, and I already had a love and fascination for ideas of sea monsters and the like, so overall I guess you can say that the movie kind of got me hooked.
If there is one downside with this movie, it’s how the public perception of sharks turned very negative, causing wide-spread trophy fishing and “revenge hunts“. I’d say that this is a people problem, not a movie problem though…both Peter Benchley and Steven Spielberg expressed regret over how the movie caused such an impact on the real-world shark population. That being said, shark populations have also suffered from industrial overfishing and the shark fin trade. Humans will always remain the most dangerous creature, no matter what.
Jaws was the highest grossing film in history until the release of Star Wars two years later, and in 2001 the Library of Congress selected it for preservation in the US National Film Registry. While there’s a huge ocean of shark movies out there, Jaws still takes the biggest and sharpest bite compared to all of them.
Director: Steven Spielberg
Writers: Peter Benchley, Carl Gottlieb
Country & year: USA, 1975
Actors: Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, Lorraine Gary, Murray Hamilton, Carl Gottlieb, Jeffrey Kramer, Susan Backlinie, Jonathan Filley, Ted Grossman, Chris Rebello
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/
Enter production hell that is The Primevals, fifty years in the making that even outlived its creator. Yes, this dream passion project about evil lizard people already started way back in the late 1960s by stop-motion animators David Allen, Jim Danforth and visual artist Dennis Muren. The project went through several pre-productions throughout the 70s and 80s with several scripts and titles, such as The Glacial Empire and Primordium: The Arctic World. The British horror studio Hammer Films was interested in the project at one time in the 1970s, but it fell through due to creative differences. In 1978, David Allen met film producer Charles Band where he pitched the concept with the new title The Primevals, but again, it fizzled out because of reasons.
In the meantime, David Allen started to work with Charles Band with stop-motion effects in films such as Laserblast, The Dungeonmaster, Dolls, Puppet Master, Subspecies and Bride of The Re-Animator. He also worked in bigger productions like The Howling, Willow and Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. So even though the name David Allen doesn’t ring any bells, and you’re a kid of the ’80s and ’90s, you’ve surely seen some of his standout work. Then the 1990s came and David Allen still refused to give up The Primevals, because the ’90s was after all the decade of optimism. And after Charles Band had some great success with his new-established company Full Moon, much thanks to a distribution deal with Paramount Home Video, he finally decided to produce the film. This would also be the most expensive and ambitious Full Moon film to date. The principal photography for The Primevals was completed in Romania in 1994 with some scenes shot in the Dolomites mountains in Italy, and the project finally seemed to reach the light outside the tunnel.
Then came post-production hell, a lot due to Full Moon ending their collab with Paramount Home Video and the money dried out. Allen did what he could to finish the project in his sparetime for the next five years until the pull got plugged when Allen died of cancer in 1999, age 54. RIP. Fast-forward to 2018 when Charles Band launched an Indiego campaign to collect over $40,000 to get the film finished once and for all. The post-production was then handed over to stop-motion animator Kent Burton and a small team of visual effects artists. The film was finally released in 2023 at the Fantasia Film Festival. The Primevals is now available on DVD/Blu-ray and Full Moon Streaming. Also check out the making-of documentary Lost To Time: Unearthing The Primevals.
So… the plot goes like this: We start off somewhere in a snowy mountains in Tibet where some locals fight against a big yeti, in pure Ray Harryhausen-style. After they defeat the yeti it gets taxidermied and brought to a University, and a small team of scientists go on an expedition to Nepal to search for its origin. The team is led by Matt Connor and the anthropologist Dr. Claire Collier, and they’re not the most interesting people to follow. But the plot thickens when they arrive in Tibet and discovers a mysterious futuristic-looking tower in the mountain. And then they suddenly fall through the ground after a quick avalanche and find themselves in a grotto. Luckily for them the entrance is not far away which leads them to a another pre-historic dimension, not so unlike what we saw in Nazis at the Center of the Earth (2012). But instead of nazis we have stop-motion lizards, aliens and other weird stuff. Good luck, have fun and don’t die.
I have to admit that I didn’t know about this project until recently, which to my understanding have been closely followed by more die hard Full Moon fans throughout the years. As going in more blind minus the hype and the anticipation, other than it looked interesting enough judging by the trailer, I’d say: It’s fine. It’s more impressive on the technical aspect than scriptwise. Some of the set-designs, matte paintings and use of miniatures look pretty remarkable, and you can also tell that every single penny was put on screen in terms of production value. The use of CGI, which there is very little of are added when necessary, just as it should. The element, besides the stop-motion, that gave me some extra tickle on the nostalgia bones, were the underground castles, that took me back to films like The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958). This is more or less a throwback film to a bygone era, as much as it is a passion project to showcase Allen’s love for stop-motion on the most epic scale he was able to reach. The sad thing is that he never got the chance to see the final product of his own magnum opus. What can you say… life’s not fair.
Then you have the human characters which are nothing much to speak about. It’s wooden and by default at its best, like most of Full Moon films where the stop-motion creatures have way more emotions than the actors. There’s some dead meat here and a lot of talking and exposition since the budget never reached the lengths to fully flesh out the pretty over-ambitious story on a visual standpoint. A very common issue when we have a concept that would need a bigger boat to reach the full potential. That said, the third act really pays it off with some fun stop-motion action, actors in ape/monkey costumes and more, and has overall enough of the retro charm to spark some classic sense of wonder that will make you feel like a kid again.
Director: David Allen
Writers: David Allen, Randall William Cook
Country & year: USA/Romania, 1994-2023
Actors: Juliet Mills, Richard Joseph Paul, Leon Russom, Walker Brandt, Tai Thai, Eric Steinberg, Robert Cornthwaite, Dolph Scott, Kevin Mangold, Jeffrey S. Farley, Billy Scudder
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9352178/
A British-Pakistani must confront her ancestral trauma head-on when she is haunted by a malevolent spirit seeking retribution for colonial atrocities in British India.
It is Horror Short Sunday again, and this time we’re taking a look at Leave Me Alone, a creepy supernatural horror short!
Director: Shehroze Khan
Writer: Shehroze Khan
Country & year: UK, 2025
Actors: Anisa Butt, Jonathan Hansler, Sulayman Khan, Kiran Sonia Sawar, Mehmood Sultan
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt36980212/
We’re in the year 1968, and we see a teenage girl who has gotten herself a baby alligator. Sounds like the perfect pet, right? At least the girl loves the little thing. Her parents, though, are not quite as thrilled. After finding alligator-poo on his clothes, the father flushes the poor baby alligator down the toilet, in agreement with the mother while they plot finding some excuse when their daughter gets back home. A-holes. Well, that’s not the end of baby gator, of course.
Fast forward 12 years later to 1980, body parts are exiting the sewers and getting police detective David Madison involved, a slightly world-weary “tired of all this bullshit“ guy who is still struggling with the the loss of his partner in a botched case in St. Louis, which has given him a reputation of being extremely unlucky for whoever should be assigned as his new partner. And David once again proves to be a “partner-killer“ when the rookie cop Kelly willingly goes with him to check out the sewers, and becomes a gator snack. Oops. David’s still got a long way to go if he wants to beat Chuck Steel out of that department, though.
David, with two recently lost partners, missing locals, and also mysterious dog carcasses appearing in the sewers, finds himself in search of more than just a giant alligator. He teams up with herpetologist Marisa Kendall, who (surprise, surprise!) actually happens to be the baby alligator girl from the opening scene, and they develop some kind of (rather uninteresting) romance. To top it all David’s also got the problem of a receding hairline, which seems to be a big issue for both him a lots of other people for some reason. Apparently is was the actor himself, Robert Forster, who insisted on adding these jokes on behalf of his real-life thinning hair.
So, here we have the creature feature film Alligator from 1980, directed by Lewis Teague (who also made Cat’s Eye) from a screenplay by John Sayles. It was produced independently and released by Group 1 Films, and became somewhat of a box office flop in North America, but became more successful in other territories, and of course, have garnered a cult following since. Now, you might have heard about the “alligators in sewers“ urban legend, based on how people allegedly flushed alligators down the toilets. Yes, they sold these as pets back in the day, with people buying them and probably thinking they looked so cute as babies, and freaking out once they realized that they actually grow…you know, like babies usually do. In 1967 alligators were listed as an endangered species which stopped the sales, but the myths and legends about giant gators surviving in the sewers lived on, and inspired this movie.
And yes, this is a B-horror movie through and through, but as far as creature feature flicks go this one does at least give us a good amount of actual creature scenes. And it really tries to go all the way, and you don’t have to wait ages before something starts happening. Sewer workers are chomped up, a kid gets eaten after falling into a swimming pool, a wedding reception is totally wrecked (don’t worry, those people were just a bunch of rich, arrogant and not-quite-innocent douchebags anyway) with the latter being the most fun scene of them all. The effects are pretty solid, mixing many good old-school practical effects with an actual real-life alligator. The name of the real-life alligator was Morris, and he starred in several other films aside from this one. Last year he passed away from old age at his longtime home, the Colorado Gator Farm. R.I.P. big guy.
Overall, Alligator is one of those creature features that delivers the goods without too much dilly-dallying or uninteresting subplots. There’s a lot of fun to be had here with a campy and solid charm, combining the creature horror with some humor and action.
A direct-to-video sequel called Alligator II: The Mutation was released in 1991, but that one’s got jack shit to do with the original.
Director: Lewis Teague
Writers: John Sayles, Frank Ray Perilli
Country & year: USA, 1980
Actors: Robert Forster, Robin Riker, Michael V. Gazzo, Dean Jagger, Sydney Lassick, Jack Carter, Perry Lang, Henry Silva, Bart Braverman, Morris
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080354/
The young French bird Alice (Souheila Yacoub) has sought the good life in ‘Merica, but has already realized that the grass isn’t much greener on the other side. Because we soon learn that her husband, William, is an abusive piece of poo. The scars she’s wearing around the waist can tell. After he dies horribly in a car accident and burns alive as if it was pure karma, Alice should take that as a blessing, get the fuck away and never look back. But then the movie would pretty much be over and not much to talk about. So thanks for staying to the cost of our morbid entertainment, I guess. She doesn’t shed a tear during the funeral, because who would, and doesn’t hesitate to take off the wedding ring. The rest of the family only give her the stinkeye, and things only get worse when they have a gathering by the dinner table in her in-law’s old moldy house in the countryside. Soon, the gathering quickly escalates to hell on Earth, just like one would imagine every Thanksgiving crashout since 2016.
Now, if the circumstances didn’t look bad enough on the surface, we learn that the house was owned by none other than the mystery man who we have heard on the old tapes during the franchise for over forty years. So don’t worry, this is an Evil Dead movie, through and through. He’s the grandfather of Alice’s in-laws where William’s younger brother has gathered all his notes and, of course, the Necronomicon to hopefully write a book about it. Grampa also made a mythical dagger hidden somewhere in the attic, the only weapon that can kill the deadites. And the deadites want that dagger before it gets in the hands of Sam and Dean, or maybe Ash, if he’s still out there. So yes, the deadites actually have an important mission here other than to reek hell and mayhem. That leaves us back to the car crash where the lakeside deadite (the one we saw in the beginning of Evil Dead Rise) possesses William’s dead body which eventually reaches the meatsuit of his dad, where it all explodes by the dinner table when he suddenly stabs their dog to death with a fork.
So, the third installment of the “gritty/serious/trauma“ phase of the Evil Dead franchise, as I like to call it, is directed by the Frenchman Sébastien Vanicek and co-written with Florent Bernard. The original plan was to have Lee Cronin return as director after the success of Evil Dead Rise, but he chose to make Evil Dead Mummy instead. Producer Sam Raimi then handpicked Vanicek after watching his directorial debut Vermines (2023). And what a great pick to spice up the franchise with some spicy French Extremity. Yes, this entry is maybe the most brutal and mean-spirited of them all as Vanicek approaches the material with much of the same raging energy which Alexandre Aja did back in 2006 with The Hills Have Eyes. The Frenchmen just know how to cook when they’re at the their hungriest, or just to quote Orson Welles: Aaaaaah the French…
And yes, the film is heavy on metaphors, because we’re after all in the 2020s. The word Burn in the title is as much the metaphor of burning the bridges of toxic relationships as burning in hell, and let’s be honest with ourselves: many of us can relate either we want to acknowledge it or not, and I’m always in for it to gleefully witness a rotten family tree getting destroyed from the inside in the most brutal ways by the demons they’ve created themselves. You get what you fucking deserve, like Joker once said. And with that said, while this family is as much the villains as the deadites, this is an Evil Dead movie in the purest form that builds up to a a fierce non-stop demonic haunted house ride that rages as fast as a song by Cannibal Corpse. And while the franchise has never been rich on plot, this one also dig more into the lore. The deadites have also developed some new skills, if I’m not mistaken.
The gory highlights are rolling like rotting pearls on strings here with some creative and flawless practical effects. My favorite is the one in the beginning at the lake where someone’s face gets torn apart by fishing lines. Demon dad shoots himself several times in the skull as he smiles in front of the family to show that nothing can kill a deadite. You have brutal car fights where fingers get chopped off by the car door, and the one that should be the most painful, where Alice gets a pen shoved straight into her eardrums. And she reacts as if she just got a small splinter on her thumb. We all know that the French have a strong threshold for pain, but still. Just barely touching the eardrums with Q-tips is torture. Souheila Yacoub gets a lot of beating, if she hasn’t gone through hell already, and is a very likable final girl to root for. The only redeeming character who isn’t a malignant narcissist like the rest of the family is their youngest son Joseph (Wednesday actor Hunter Doohan) as he’s trapped in the hellish crossfire.
There’s also a particular slimy gross-out moment here to mention that includes dentals, and if you thought that the similar scene from Evil Dead Mummy was yucki, this one takes it almost one meter further. Fans of Jackass or Lucifer Valentine will probably slurp this like liquid candy though.
The humor is very subtle and almost absent as it follows the same serious tone as the previous two, but there are some freudian laughs to be had here. The demented crazylady in the wheelchair cracked me up when she got dragged down the stairs and have no clue what’s going on. And I’m not the only one who saw the clear parallels to the Baker family from Resident Evil 7: Biohazard. The only thing missing was a thick southern accent. Welcome to the family, hon. I find it funny how we have gotten more Resident Evil in other films in later years, unintentionally or not, than in the actual Resident Evil films. The only thing that drags the film down a bit is the CGI at the climax, which unfortunately looks pretty shoddy in contrast of all things considered. But all in all, Evil Dead Burn is another strong entry in a franchise that has survived for over 40 years. Six films in and not one single dud and still manage to feel fresh and new for the classic audiences (wink wink). That must be a record for a horror franchise. So let’s have a toast with a shot of fresh candle wax. Yum.
The next installment, Evil Dead Wrath, was wrapped already in May, but don’t hold your breath — for whatever reason we have to wait until 2028 for that one.
Director: Sébastien Vanicek
Writers: Florent Bernard, Sébastien Vanicek
Country & year: New Zealand/USA/Canada, 2026
Actors: Souheila Yacoub, Hunter Doohan, Luciane Buchanan, Erroll Shand, Greta van den Brink, Tandi Wright, Alain Chabat, Maude Davey, George Pullar, Keanu Karim, Victory Ndukwe, Tapiwa Soropa
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt31170389/
A man’s genitals are transforming into a snakehead fish. Unable to escape his voyeuristic past, he struggles between the fine line of his humanity and animalistic nature.
Horror Short Sunday is here again, and this time we’re taking a look at Fish Balls. And, oh boy…is this a weird one…
Director: Anwar Johari Ho
Writer: Victor Yee Fei Chen, Andy Darrel Gomes, Anwar Johari Ho
Country & year: Malaysia, 2024
Actors: Kahoe Hon, Elise Shick
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt34381266/
We’re in a small town in Scotland, where rookie police constable Rachel Heggie is on patrol. Suddenly she witnesses a car strike some mysterious man in a trenchcoat, who seemingly disappears after getting hit. The driver of the car, Francis “Caesar“ Sargison, is a familiar face to the police so Heggie is quick to arrest him. After she brings him into the police station, Sgt Jim Macready charges Caesar for reckless driving. So in a cell he goes, where there’s already another guy who is in for beating his wife. Now, the only thing Heggie needs to do, is finding the mystery man wearing a trenchcoat (and no, it’s not Castiel, but this could have easily belonged somewhere in the Supernatural universe) and she radios two other police officers for the task. It appears his disappearing act wasn’t too solid, as they quickly locate him and brings him in for questioning. He’s covered in scratches, goes by the name “Six“, and carries a notebook with a list of names. Soon, it becomes apparent that this mysterious dude is on a mission, and the names in his notebook are from people who have committed horrible acts and not done anything to atone for them. And it is also soon revealed that nearly everyone in the police station have dark secrets of their own…it’s not only the ones behind bars that are the bad guys…
Let Us Prey is a supernatural horror film from 2014, directed by Brian O’Malley (who also directed The Lodgers from 2017) and co-written with Fiona Watson and David Cairns. And if you’re in for something fun, gory and supernatural this might just be right up your alley! While you become aware very early in the movie that you’re watching one of those “pray for your sins“ kind of story, it does so with a bit of almost cartoonish glee by giving us a bunch of characters that truly deserves it. The characters are all interesting enough, where he have the protagonist Heggie who is struggling with something from her past, and is pretty much the only likable character among the bunch, except from perhaps Six himself. The others are…mostly a bunch of horrible a-holes. They’re all having a history of violence and wrongdoings, and we’re certainly looking forward to see them finally pay for their misdeeds.
The movie is mostly very fast-paced with few dull moments, with a fitting John Carpenter-esque synth score by Steve Lynch. It also becomes bloody and gory at times, where especially towards the end we get full-on mayhem where one of the bad guys covers himself in barbed wire and tries to become Rambo and blast everything to pieces. Crazy and fun! And since the majority of the characters here are deliberately unlikable, it goes a long way to have a devilish “antagonist“ who isn’t really the bad guy here.
Let Us Prey is one of those popcorn movies that is simply a good time, with lots of violence and fun and a finale that goes wild!
Director: Brian O’Malley
Writers: Fiona Watson, David Cairns, Brian O’Malley
Country & year: UK/Ireland, 2014
Actors: Liam Cunningham, Pollyanna McIntosh, Bryan Larkin, Hanna Stanbridge, Douglas Russell, Niall Greig Fulton, Jonathan Watson, Brian Vernel, James McCreadie, Sophie Stephanie Farmer
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3148348/
A girl is running out of her home, terrified and constantly looking after someone…or something. After getting inside a car, she drives away and later that night she ends up at a beach all alone. On her cell phone, she tells her parents that she loves them, and that’s the last call she ever makes. The next thing we see is the girl’s brutally mutilated corpse in the morning sunlight. And yes, this remains one of the very best opening scenes in modern horror movies, as it effectively introduces us to what could happen to the victims here in a very simple yet brutal and terrifying way!
Then we head over to our protagonist, Jay Height (Maika Monroe), who goes to the movies with her boyfriend Hugh (Jake Weary). Suddenly, Hugh asks her if she can see a girl wearing a yellow dress, which she can’t. He then freaks out and urges them to leave. Well, we all have those moments of not wanting to meet a specific someone from our past, right? Nothing to worry about…and absolutely no red flags when a guy freaks out so much over seeing someone that he makes you leave the theater before the movie is finished. At least Jay’s naive enough to not put much thought into it, and later they have sex for the first time in his car. How romantic…until he chloroforms her. When Jay wakes up, she’s tied to a wheelchair in an abandoned building, and while she might have a thousand and one different reasons circulating in her head why he wanted to do this to her, at least there’s no way she expected this: he explains that he is followed by some demonic entity that wants to kill him, which takes appearance of random people and only he can see. The only way to throw it off your trail (at least for a while) is to have sex. Yes, you just need to fuck around, plainly and simply. Then the entity will follow the person you had sex with instead, but here’s the catch: once that person is killed, it will come back to get you. So: he urges Jay to keep having sex with people to keep the entity at bay. Talk about the worst STD ever.
Jay is of course bewildered and probably a little heartbroken too. One thing is being unlucky enough to encounter a man (or woman) who only uses you for sex, but this is on a whole other level. At school, she notices an old woman walking towards her. And surprise, surprise…no one else can see this lady. And what is essentially a rather normal-looking old grandma who might have escaped from a nearby care home, is here turned into one of the most creepy scenes ever, just outright chilling…and that’s pretty much what the movie delivers throughout the rest of the playtime: lots of really creepy and even outright scary scenes, packed with tension and paranoid suspense throughout!
It Follows is a supernatural horror film from 2014, written and directed by David Robert Mitchell. It grossed $23.3 million worldwide against its $1.3 million budget, and has later been deemed a modern horror classic. Mitchell’s inspiration for the film was based on some recurring dreams he had in his youth, all centered around him being followed. The movie was shot in Detroit, Michigan, and in the scene where Hugh has Jay tied to the chair, the interiors were shot at the abandoned Packard Automotive Plant. They had originally planned to shoot it at some other location, but that place became an active crime scene as a murder had been committed there. Always good to have a backup-plan, I guess.
I remember back in the day (yikes, it’s already been 12 years since this movie’s release already!) when It Follows hit the theaters. Naturally, we were excited to check it out as it had received a fair amount of buzz, and to be fair, this movie certainly deserved it. It’s actually the last movie that was able to give me the willies. To be honest, I actually miss the feeling of a movie being able to scare me a little…not that there haven’t been any scary movies afterwards, of course! There’s been plenty of them…but the more horror movies you see, then, well…desensitizing can be a bitch. Then again, I certainly don’t miss the times of not wanting to go to the bathroom at night, so I’ll take that win at least.
Much of the movie’s unsettling atmosphere and tension is thanks to Mike Gioluakis, who said that both he and Mitchell were fans of the still photographer Gregory Crewdson, with the somewhat surreal suburban imagery which suited It Follows so well. There’s a heavy use of wide-shots, making us constantly looking for something within the frame that might be creeping towards the protagonist. This is what makes It Follows so genuinely creepy! It is all about how it makes the entity look like everything from completely normal people to something a lot more uncanny. You never know who it is, or where it is. It makes you paranoid, and it craves that you pay attention to everything that happens on screen. I also love the retro music score, composed by Disasterpeace (Rich Vreeland).
And while there have been many interpretations about metaphors, including that it’s about STD’s (Sexually Transmitted Disease, except in this case it would be more like a Sexually Transmitted Demon), it mostly serves as allegories for transition into adulthood, assault, and the inevitability of death. Death always creeps towards us, and it might have been very close to us at certain times too. And, to quote the director himself: “We’re all here for a limited amount of time, and we can’t escape our mortality, but love and sex are two ways in which we can – at least temporarily – push death away.”
It Follows remains, and will most likely do so, a horror classic that still holds up very well and has for sure been an inspiration to many others. A sequel has been in the talks for years, but it wasn’t until 2023 when a sequel entitled They Follow was announced to be in development. Filming is set to begin sometime this summer.
Writer and director: David Robert Mitchell
Country & year: USA, 2014
Actors: Maika Monroe, Jake Weary, Keir Gilchrist, Daniel Zovatto, Olivia Luccardi, Lili Sepe, Bailey Spry, Claire Sloma, Mike Lanier, Ingrid Mortimer
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3235888/
A woman realizes she’s been catfished by her worst nightmare.
It is Horror Short Sunday again, and this time we’re taking a look at Heartbeater, where a date quickly turns sinister!
Director: Rob Himebaugh
Writer: Rob Himebaugh
Country & year: US, 2022
Actors: Hailee Lipscomb, Caroline Quigley
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt21435782/
