A girl sees something strange while recording with her Super 8 camera.
In Frame is a creepy horror short with a simple premise: having fun with a Super 8 camera, and then get something in frame that’s not supposed to be there..
Director: Vincent Dormani
Writer: Vincent Dormani
Country & year: USA, 2023
Actors: Anna Riegel, Vincent Dormani
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt28807799/
Michelle has had an argument with her fiancè Ben, and she’s packed a suitcase, left behind a diamond ring and ends up driving through rural Louisiana in the middle of the night. While Ben keeps calling her, begging for her to return, she’s getting news reports about several blackouts in major cities. Suddenly her car is struck by something, which causes it to flip off the road. For Michelle, everything then turns black. When she wakes up, she notices she’s gotten a leg injury, but that’s not the worst part…she is also chained to a wall in a concrete room. A man named Howard then unchains her and tells her that there’s been some kind of attack, maybe by the Russians or Martians, he’s not sure. He found her by the car wreck and saved her by bringing her to his shelter: an underground bunker. To top it all, he also tells her they cannot leave the place for at least a few years, because the air outside has become poisonous and everyone who goes outside now will end up dead. Is Howard just an insane madman who decided to kidnap her, or is there any truth to his stories?
10 Cloverfield Lane is a science fiction horror thriller from 2016, directed by Dan Trachtenberg in his directorial debut. It was also produced by J. J. Abrams and Lindsey Weber, and written by Josh Campbell, Matthew Stuecken, and Damien Chazelle. It belongs to the Cloverfield franchise, and it’s the second film. That was not the original plan for the movie’s script, however, as it was originally called “The Cellar” and had absolutely nothing to do with the franchise, but when Paramount Pictures bought the script and commenced further development under Bad Robot Productions, it ended up being a spiritual successor to the 2018 found-footage film Cloverfield.
Watching this movie while knowing it’s part of the Cloverfield franchise might make it a somewhat confusing experience, as it doesn’t appear to be tied to it in any way. Understandably, of course, since the original script wasn’t supposed to have any ties to the “Cloverfield Universe” at all. I still think that going into the experience of this film while knowing as little as possible, other than a certain relationship to the first film in some way, is the best way to watch this one. It will get you engaged by the series of strange events and the several red flags which may later prove to simply be red herrings, and sometimes even both. Arguably it is a movie that could have worked perfectly fine on its own, without the Cloverfield setting.
The cast here is pretty good, with Mary Elizabeth Winstead having a solid lead role, and John Goodman doing a perfect portrayal of the eccentric and slightly indecipherable Howard. So overall, 10 Cloverfield Lane is a thrilling and intriguing mystery horror film, which manages to be quite suspenseful throughout. There are twists and turns throughout, constantly keeping you guessing as to what the situation here really is.
Director: Dan Trachtenberg
Writers: Josh Campbell, Matt Stuecken, Damien Chazelle
Country & year: US, 2016
Actors: John Goodman, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Gallagher Jr.,Douglas M. Griffin, Suzanne Cryer, Bradley Cooper, Sumalee Montano, Frank Mottek
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1179933/
Molly and Tim have gotten married, and they move into Molly’s childhood home. There, strange things start happening in the house, which becomes quite a bother for the newlyweds. Not to mention that Molly is a recovering heroin addict, which doesn’t exactly make anything easier. Soon, Tim has to leave town for a few days, leaving her in the house all alone. As you can imagine, upon Tim’s return he doesn’t exactly find her in the best of states. And things keep getting worse. Molly starts hearing the traditional folk song “Lovely Molly” sung by a man in the house, a man that she cannot see. Is Molly just experiencing the backlash of painful memories arising to the surface upon moving into her childhood home, or is it something other than memories haunting her?
Lovely Molly is a supernatural horror film from 2011, directed by Eduardo Sánchez, who was also one of the directors behind The Blair Witch Project (co-directed with Daniel Myrick). Unlike the aforementioned film, this one is mixing the found footage style with a traditional narrative, and starts off with a scene that gives us a little bit of an idea of what might actually happen to Molly. We see her filming herself, very clearly in a state of terror which we do not yet know the extent of. It starts the movie off with certain expectations.
The spooky happenings are nothing out of the ordinary, there are the usual alarms going off in the middle of the night, footsteps which can be heard without anyone else being present, songs sung by an unseen entity, and stuff like that. And of course, the husband has a job (in this case, he’s a truck driver) which causes him to be away from home for lengths of time, giving the little wifey enough time alone to go gradually bonkers due to what is happening around her. Yep, it’s a formula we’ve seen before, of course. Throw in a little bit of drug abuse and a scarred childhood filled with trauma, and there you have the perfect “is this really happening, or is it all in her head” scenario. The film still use this formula effectively by mixing the narrative with some found footage scenes, which consists of several POV style scenes but also some security footage which eventually leaves you wondering if there really is something there, outside of Molly’s own mind. The soundtrack also adds a bit of different flavour with the post-rock band Tortoise having recorded the score for the film.
Lovely Molly isn’t especially original but it’s a decent supernatural horror film with some creepy scenes and an eerie vibe, although it will leave the viewers a little befuddled as to what the hell was really going on.
Director: Eduardo Sánchez
Writers: Jamie Nash, Eduardo Sánchez
Also known as: The Possession
Country & year: US, 2011
Actors: Gretchen Lodge, Johnny Lewis, Alexandra Holden, Field Blauvelt, Ken Arnold, Tara Garwood, Camilla Zaidee Bennett, Kevin Murray, Doug Roberts, Dan Manning, Daniel Ross
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt1707392/
1692. The Inquisition is in decline and one of the inquisitors has been trying to find the perfect torture device. He’s developing “The Demeanour”, a torture chair created by his engineer. The engineer’s daughter Elena has different plans.
Facies (El Semblante) is a disturbing horror short, based on the extreme cruelty of the Spanish Inquisition.
Director: Raúl Cerezo, Carlos Moriana
Writer: Raúl Cerezo, Javier Trigales
Country & year: Spain, 2022
Actors: Paolo Boris, Lucía Díez, Ainhoa Abela Espino
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt15083118/
The Swedish filmmaker Bo Arne Vibenius got some sweet taste of success and fame after his ultra violent rape/revenge film and magnum opus Thriller: A Cruel Picture became a hit at the Cannes Film Festival in 1974. One year later it was time for his next film, which was originally supposed to be a far more clean and commercial film for the mainstream surface audiences.
But something went wrong, you see. Horribly wrong.
Some sources say that it was issues with the financial part that forced Vibenius to take some quick and drastic decisions. Instead of cancelling the film entirely, he rewrote the script in two days and started shooting on day three with a handheld camera around the Stockholm area. The result is Breaking Point – a spiteful, mean-spirited, bleak as bleak can be, anti-commercial, morbidly hilarious and utterly mentally deranged little sexploitation flick which makes Thriller look like a sunny day in Disneyland. All shot in English dialogue with Swedish subtitles, just in case the film wouldn’t get banned in its home country, which it of course did. Hur tråkigt.
The film centers around a middle-aged man, Bob Bellings, who looks like a cross between Peter Sellers and Ryan Gosling, where anyone with eyesight can spot his big red flags waving miles away. He’s a working stiff wearing a suit and tie at an office in a high rise building in the middle of the city, where his days consist of stamping documents. Another thing that’s stiff is his cock, and he has to stick it in someone and rather NOW before his ballsack explodes! When he’s not sitting around and fantasising about his female coworkers undressing in front of his desk or sucking his dick, he uses his free time to rape and murder women around the local area. When he can’t control his urges at work, he has the lunchtime to “do some errands”. The film starts with his first victim whom he stalks and assaults in her apartment. He smashes her skull with an ashtray and rapes her dead body.
If this wasn’t bad enough, Belling then sees a psychologist on TV who has the brilliant theory that all women have a deep, inner desire to get raped, only if you don’t kill them. Alrighty then. Now that his actions feel way more morally righteous (for lack of a better term), it’s time to extend the horizon by buying a car and heading out to the countryside to hunt for more pussy to drill. His car plate has the letters CUW (yes, with a W) just to make it obvious in a sarcastic way that his psychotic journey into pure nihilistic perversion and beyond has just begun where no one on his destructive path is safe. All I can say is just get ready for a lot of absurdity, a lot of unpleasant hardcore fucking, oral sex, reckless driving and even some hints of – TRIGGER WARNING – pedophilia.
What Breaking Point and Thriller have in common is the authentic porn scenes. But this one goes overload, to put it that way. During Bob Belling’s hazy and dream-like odyssey we can also ask what’s real and if we’re just witnessing some deep, obsessive rape fantasies from the mind of a disturbed man. Not quite easy to tell. We can also ask if the raw, impulsive and overall chaotic nature of Breaking Point is a reflection of a very troubled and angry director who’s going through an epic storm of a mental collapse or a serious existential crisis while he goes all the way to self-sabotage his own film career. This was his last film, so in that case, he succeeded.
Andreas Bellis, who mainly works as a cinematographer, has his first and last main role as the killer/rapist Bob Bellings, here under the fitting pseudonym Anton Rotchild. With his thin hair, big glasses in front of his death-staring eyes, stone-cold face and of course the big mushroom for the ladies, he certainly looks the part which he seems to embrace every second with no problem, flashing his erect dick left and right and exposing himself in the explicit hardcore porn scenes. Even though the porn is as straight-forward as can be, the film is done with the most pitch-dark cynical sense of humor, with layers of satire and some social commentary where American Psycho meets Falling Dawn in a bushy glory hole. The ending is absolutely bonkers.
And speaking of pseudonyms: names such as Oscar Wilde, Adolf Deutch and Urban Hitler can be seen in the opening credit scene. Because why not …
Although Vibenius was confident enough to get Breaking Point screened at the Cannes Festival which turned out to be a complete disaster shitshow, he feels to this day very bitter about the film and wants no one to see it. Can I blame him? Maybe, maybe not. He went as far as to do his very best to erase the film entirely from its existence by stopping it from spreading on the bootleg market. So no, Breaking Point will never get a physical dick-release and is as obscure and rare like a snowball in hell. The only place to watch it online as for now is on porn sites. Have fun!
Director: Bo Arne Vibenius
Writers: Bo Arne Vibenius, Nat Sharp
Also known as: Breaking Point – En Pornografisk Thriller
Country & year: Sweden, 1975
Actors: Andreas Bellis, Barbara Scott, Jane McIntosch, Susanne Audrian, Bertha Klingspor, Marlyn Inverness, Liza June, Adolf Deutch, Joachim Bender
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0072736/
Breaking Point – Feature film from Vibenius on Vimeo.
Rebecca “Becca” Riley is a young woman who was blinded in a car accident. The accident happened due to her boyfriend driving under the influence, and naturally their relationship has become quite strained. One day, Becca is contacted by an estate agent in Albania, telling her that she’s inherited a castle from her biological mother Lavinia Whateley. Becca, of course, is very exited about having inherited a castle, and while her boyfriend wants her to quickly sell the castle, Becca wants to learn more about her biological mother once she’s visiting the place. Upon arriving there, she starts hearing strange sounds and has visions, and her relationship with her boyfriend becomes even more strained when he just decided to invite four of his friends to come along without asking her about it first. One of these “friends” being a woman he’s been flirting with, as if the a-hole alert wasn’t already strong enough with this character. Among the group is also The Professor, who has been studying the occult and is the only person to actually believe Becca when she tells him about her experiences. Since she has had no contact with her mother and knows nothing about her or the castle she’s just inherited, she is of course also oblivious to what happens to live there…
Castle Freak is a 2020 American horror film directed by Tate Steinsiek, and is some kind of remake/reboot of the 1995 Stuart Gordon film by the same name, which are both loose adaptions of the Lovecraft story The Outsider. With emphasis on the word “loose”. While the first movie barely has anything to do with the Lovecraft story, this movie has a lot of references to all kinds of Lovecraftian stuff. As for the similarities, both are pure B-shlock entertainment, but the first one focused more on atmosphere and had a certain modest 90’s horror romp charm, while this remake adds more gore, tits and Lovecraft references. We get to know that one of the elder gods, Yog-Sothoth, is supposed to be summoned, something that was never any part at all of the original movie.
This remake of Castle Freak is a very different freak than the first movie, in many ways. I wouldn’t really recommend it just because of the Lovecraft references, as they honestly feel somewhat forced…one of the elder gods is supposed to be summoned, there’s a character which has attended the Miskatonic Universtity, the Necronomicon suddenly pops into their hands, Becca’s mother was named Lavinia…yeesh, those Lovecraftian tentacles are all over the place. Those who liked the original from 1995 will find that this one is very different, and this will likely be off-putting for some. Still, the movie offers some decent cinematography, locations and production design. Gorehounds may also enjoy the additional gore added compared to the first. So overall, it can be considered a primitively entertaining B-horror flick, just don’t expect any masterpiece. It’s shlock and sleaze, pure and simple.
Director: Tate Steinsiek
Writers: Kathy Charles, H.P. Lovecraft
Country & year: US, 2020
Actors: Clair Catherine, Jake Horowitz, Kika Magalhães, Chris Galust, Emily Sweet, Omar Shariff Brunson Jr., Elisha Pratt, Genti Kame, Klodian Hoxha, Klodjana Keco, Josif Sina, Enkel Gurakuqi, Genc Fuga
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt10701458/
A young boy named Cailen with a broken camera is visited by a sleep fairy called the Cipsneed, but he’s never heard of a sleep fairy.
The Kid and the Camera is a creepy and strange animated horror short that is quite eerie, even though it may look very innocent at first glance…
Director: Braiden Ortiz
Writer: Braiden Ortiz
Year: 2023
Actors: Richard Stibbard
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt29694810/
Beau Wasserman is afraid. He’s afraid of a lot of things, but mostly he’s afraid of going back to his childhood home. He’s grown up without a father, and his mother told him he died in the instant Beau was conceived, due to a heart murmur caused by orgasm which is supposed to run in the family (or at least according to his mother). His mother, Mona, is a successful and wealthy businesswoman, while Beau has grown up to become an extremely anxious person living in the crime-ridden Skid Row. He’s prepared for a flight in order to visit his mother for the anniversary of his father’s death, but his apartment keys and luggage are stolen and all hell breaks lose, his home is invaded by a bunch of homeless people for the night, and of course he misses his flight. How does his mother take the news about that? Well, I guess you can imagine. Later, he tries to call his mother again, only to get a UPS driver on the line telling him that he found his mother decapitated after a chandelier fell on her head. Beau, not far from having a complete mental breakdown at this point, ends up taking a bath in order to prepare himself for a final travel to his mother’s place in time for the funeral, but ends up getting in a violent confrontation with an intruder, runs out in the street naked and tries to get help from a police officer. That goes as well as you can imagine. After trying to get away from the incompetent police officer threatening to shoot him, he gets hit by a food truck, and then his anxiety-ridden journey in order to reach his mother’s funeral has just begun.
Beau Is Afraid is a surrealistic comedy drama with some horror elements, written and directed by Ari Aster. Aster, most known for his directorial debut hit Hereditary and his other horror film Midsommar, actually intended to have Beau Is Afraid as his directorial debut, with a 2011 short entitled Beau serving as the basis for this movie.. Well…for his career’s sake, it was probably best he didn’t and went for making Hereditary first, because Beau Is Afraid was a major box office bomb, despite receiving rather positive reviews from critics. It had a budget of $35 million (making it A24’s most expensive film) while only grossing $11 million. The problem with this movie is that its three hours of arthouse tragicomedy surrealism is certainly not for everyone, and it’s a movie where you need to know what you’re in for, and most specifically you should not compare it to any of Aster’s earlier movies. Those who end up watching this expecting another Hereditary or Midsommar, will be disappointed and most likely confused as heck.
The movie is chock-full of metaphors about childhood trauma, manipulation, guilt-tripping, shame and anxiety, presented with some crazy visuals, weird characters and great performances. Art-wise you could say it often leans into the more abstract, where you aren’t told exactly how to interpret everything and this will often lead to some real wtf-moments. To be honest, the first part of the movie which takes place in Skid Row, despite how insane it actually is, is probably the most down-to-earth and believable part of the entire movie. Just like Beau has no other choice than to keep trudging through the weirdness he encounters, we who watch his journey have no other choice than to keep trudging through it with him, not always able to make sense of what is happening. One easy way to define the movie, is to call it “Beau has mommy issues”, with very clear depictions of his mother being manipulative and toxic. He’s filled with anxiety, guilt, shame, and everything that comes with such a crappy upbringing. While this is certainly the core of the movie’s topics, there’s so many other things here that could make you quite busy with metaphor-hunting. I personally saw some vague hints about possible sexual abuse, and possibly some Jocasta complex thrown into the mix. Many things in Beau’s life appears to be muddled with lies from his mother, and we, the viewers, are not entirely sure what is fact and what is not.
Joaquin Phoenix does a good job portraying the anxiety-ridden, guilt-tripped to the point of barely functioning, and constantly confused and scared Beau. The character’s confused and totally lost appearance fits in with how completely without hope we realize Beau actually is. Aster described this film as a “nightmare comedy”, and as “if you pumped a 10-year-old full of Zoloft, and had him get your groceries”. No matter how you may view this film and how you may interpret it, there’s no doubt Aster knows a little bit about trauma and anxiety, that’s for sure.
Beau Is Afraid is a weird, surrealistic Freudian nightmare, sometimes quite abstract and a bit demanding to keep up with, but if you want something on the weirder scale, this might be something for you.
Writer and director: Ari Aster
Country & year: USA, 2023
Actors: Joaquin Phoenix, Patti LuPone, Amy Ryan, Nathan Lane, Kylie Rogers, Denis Ménochet, Parker Posey, Zoe Lister-Jones, Armen Nahapetian, Julia Antonelli, Stephen McKinley Henderson
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt13521006/
The human race is in danger when a 6.000.000 ton asteroid is on its way to Earth to wipe us all out. But don’t worry, a group of astronauts is sent to blow it to pieces before it reaches the atmosphere. They land on the asteroid with a small shuttle sent from the space station Gamma 3, and the set design looks as convincing as a high school play. At first glance, you may assume this was a cheap space opera from the 1950s, but The Green Slime is from the same year as 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968. Both also distributed by MGM, just so you know. While they implant the explosives, they come across some – yeah, you guessed it – green, glowing slime. Nothing much to worry about since it will go down with the explosion. Ha, so you thought. A sample of the green liquid manages to attach itself to one of the astronaut’s space suits and becomes a blind passenger to the space station.
After they are back safe and sound to the space station and mission completed, they celebrate with champagne and funk music with a group of young nurses. To have some shallow character development thrown in we have some boring and stiff melodrama, strained friendships and such bullshit we couldn’t care much less about. The real fun begins when the green slime(r) starts to transform itself into cute rubber monster creatures with a big eye and electric tentacles to fry their victims. They also scream constantly like a bunch of horny witches on helium while having a non-stop orgasm.
The Green Slime is an odd hybrid of a production and a campy, goofy, lighthearted schlockfest like you’d expect from such a title, and if not by the surf rock theme song that belongs more in a Saturday Morning Cartoon intro. An ambitious project on paper with a script from Batman creator Bill Finger that was supposed to be a fifth film in a film series from the big Hollywood company/distributor MGM and directed by an Italian guy. Although the film is an Italian project financed by American dollars, it somehow managed to end up at Toei Studios in Japan with Kinji Fukasaku (Battle Royale) in the directing chair. The cultural crashes could be heard all over the Pacific Ocean.
The Green Slime leaves more of the impression of being directed by some naive film student on his first acid trip based on a comic book from the mind of a seven-year-old. The effects and production design are straight from the the stone age and made from kids toys that gave me Dinosaur War Izenborg flashbacks, a dear childhood favorite of mine. So I can’t really complain, can I…
Although there’s little to zero tension to be felt here, the actors (most of them) tries their very best to keep a straight face and convince us that they’re in serious danger with the silly rubber monsters wobbling confused and disorientated around. They seem as threatening and sinister as something you’d see in a Halloween special of Barney & Friends. While the whole cast consists of western Caucasians, a group of Japanese children got the daunting task to wear the rubber – and assumingly heavy costumes which they clearly struggle to wear without almost falling over like a piss-drunk hobo every three seconds. I could easily imagine a string of J-cussing to be heard behind the costumes beetween the takes. Kuso!
So overall, The Green Slime is a fun, silly Sci-Fi, B-movie schlock that is suitable for the whole family, and was also the very first film to be mocked on the pilot episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000. It’s available on DVD and Blu-ray from Warner Archive Collection.
Director: Kinji Fukasaku
Writers: Charles Sinclair, Bill Finger, Tom Rowe
Also known as: Trusselen fra det ytre rom (Norway)
Country & year: Italy, Japan, USA, 1968
Actors: Robert Horton, Luciana Paluzzi, Richard Jaeckel, Bud Widom, Ted Gunther, David Yorston, Robert Dunham and a lot of nurses
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt0064393/
A comedian is infected by a demon that eats anyone she’s jealous of.
Hell Gig is a fun horror short about a cute little jealousy-demon!
Director: Ella Gale
Writer: Ella Gale
Country & year: USA, 2022
Actors: Bruce Bundy, Jamie Loftus
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt21192508/
