HorrorGhouls – Page 9 – Horror Ghouls

Ouija Shark 2 (2022)

Posted on July 9, 2024September 9, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

It’s Shark Week and all, and since I’ve already talked about the modern classic that is Ouija Shark four years ago, now it’s time to take a look at the sequel.

Ouija Shark 2 opens with a quick summary of the first one where Anthony (John Migliore) sacrificed himself to save his daughter from getting eaten by a ghost shark. Anthony (John Migliore again) has since gotten stuck in a cheap green-screened Hell as a twisted parody of Dr. Strange where he’s getting chased and fighting against… gorillas. Of course, what else did you expect.

Anthony’s supposedly grieving wife (played by Deborah Jayne Reilly Smith) gives an emotionless speech with some crocodile tears, standing by his gravestone and swears that she will bring him back. She visits the fortune-teller who helped Anthony crossing over to the other side, in order to whack the shark and get some answers. The crystal ball tells us what we already know: that he’s in Hell. We can’t leave him THERE. We have to SAVE him, Anthony’s wife says with the emotion of a flat google voice. It’s not gonna be easy, the fortune-teller replies. It’s gonna be a barefoot trip to the park, don’t you worry.

Because after a quick meeting with The Grim Reaper (played by a dude with some cheap white paint on his face), Anthony gets some assistance from a ghost alligator which will help him finishing the evil shark. And just out of the blue, as expected, we have a musical number here where a goofy Satan and his TikTok brides show Taylor Swift how you make a catchy song (and that was not irony). Meanwhile, in the land of the living, Anthony’s wife is in the local woods to ask the mom of the fortune-teller for help. She’s a hermit and not interested. Shove off, she says. Can’t blame her. She changes her mind, though. But who cares. Now we want some shark mayhem, as the poster teases us with.

And the poster didn’t lie. If the film wasn’t amateur-hour already, just wait for the last thirty minutes – or as Satan himself says: You’ve seen nothing yet, folks! Here we have a series of random nightly cityscape shots where the ghost shark and the gator boss fight each other. Both creatures are, just like in the first film, ultra-cheap looking cute puppets that toddlers would have in their bed, and it looks as epic and cinematic as you’d expect. The gator spits out yellow-glowing puffy CGI balls while Satan controls the shark with a ouija board as he’s laughing and having a blast. The military chimes in and fires some missiles. The shark zaps them by shooting force-lighting through its eyes. Lots of buildings get destroyed, even a nuclear power plant (!) Oh, the mayhem, carnage and destruction! Roland Emmerich would eat his heart out. Really intense stuff, in other words. We see a handful of extras who run left and right in front a black, foggy background, all of which I would bet is super proud to be a part of Ouija Shark 2. And don’t blink if you wanna catch the two-second cameo by Lloyd Kaufman.

Ouija Shark 2 is written and directed by the main protagonist himself, John Migliore. And he goes all in for a crazier tone than the first one with a script that must have been co-written by a group of eight-year olds who just made it up as they went along. While the first had a whopping budget of 300 (yes, three hundred) Canadian dollars, I’d guess this one is slightly higher (50 dollars extra maybe), which gives us a few more green screen backgrounds rather than just the local woods and the director’s backyard. The acting is, of course, a big factor here, which is as strong and solid as you’d see in an elementary school play. But the one who takes the golden raspberry here, is Deborah Jayne Reilly Smith. She’s so stiff, lifeless and ridiculously robotic that she makes Mark Zuckerberg actually look like a normal human being. That in itself quite impressive.

So, whats next for this epic franchise, we may wonder? How about Ouija Shark 3: The Harpoon Made Me Do it, just to spitball an idea.

Writer and director: John Migliore
Country & year: Canada, 2022
Actors: John Migliore, Deborah Jayne Reilly Smith, Kylie Gough, Simon Wheeldon, Lena Montecalvo, Jay MacAulay, Sabrina Migliore, Emmalene Pruden, Nicholas Migliore
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21409958/

Prequel: Ouija Shark (2020)

UNCANNY ALLEY 02: THE NIGHT SHIFT – ANIMATED HORROR SHORT

Posted on July 7, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

A late-night janitor gets a strange visitor when cleaning in the swimming pool area.

For this week’s Horror Short Sunday, we take a look at the animated horror short The Night Shift, which is the second episode of the animated series Uncanny Alley shown on Adult Swim. It’s created by Rodrigo Goulão de Sousa, who is an animator based in France. The episodes are all horror themed, with surreal and often bizarre elements mixed into the creepiness. This episode starts off with a seemingly “ordinary” supernatural event: a bleeding crooked ghost walks by, leaving stains of blood all over the floor. At this point, the janitor seems more downhearted by the fact that he’s got to clean it up, rather than showing any fear over seeing an actual ghost…but then, the ghost starts gibbering some kind of nonsense and we’re suddenly thrown into a surreal, bizarre lovecraftian world of some kind. Certainly worth a watch and all the episodes are available on Adult Swim’s YouTube channel.

UNCANNY ALLEY 02: THE NIGHT SHIFT - ANIMATED HORROR SHORT

Director: Rodrigo Goulão de Sousa
Writer: Rodrigo Goulão de Sousa
Country & year: USA, 2024

Piggy (2022)

Posted on July 5, 2024July 5, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

Sara is an overweight girl who gets constantly bullied by a group of other teenage girls: Maca, Roci and Claudia. One of these girls even used to be her friend. They call her Cerdita (Piggy), and she can’t get a moment of peace no matter where she goes. On a hot summer day, she decides to visit the local swimming pool, where there’s no one else except another man who leaves shortly after. The peace doesn’t last long, though, because of course the three bullies comes along and ruins everything for her and also ends up stealing her backpack and clothes. Wearing nothing but her bikini, she has to walk home and gets harassed by a group of men who makes fun of her weight. Devastated, she escapes onto a side road, where she sees a parked van. Suddenly, a bloodied Claudia appears in the window of the van, screaming and begging for Sara to help her. Struck with fear, she freezes when realizing that the driver of the van has kidnapped those girls. Then, the kidnapper locks gazes with her, and she recognizes him as the man who was by the swimming pool earlier. He drops off her towel so she can cover herself, and drives off. Returning home, Sara finds herself conflicted as the kidnapper is one of the very few people in her life who have shown her some kindness and respect, and she decides to not tell anyone about what happened. Things escalate as the search for the missing girls are put into force, and other people are found dead. Sara is not sure how long she can keep her mouth shut in allegiance with the serial killer…

Piggy (original title: Cerdita) was released in 2022 and is Carlota Pereda’s feature film debut, and based on the short film by the same name from 2018. Both the feature film and the short film features Laura Galán in the leading role, and the shooting locations included the village of Villanueva de la Vera and the surrounding areas.

Now, looking at some of the posters for this film, where Sara is covered in blood on a hot Spanish summer day, and others where she’s been edited to be wielding a knife in her hand, one might think this is a typical revenge thriller movie. It’s not. Setting the film off by showing how Sara is bullied by people left and right while getting to meet an actual serial killer who – ironically – is the only person who shows her some kind of affection, really does set the mood. Yes, we sympathize with Sara and what she’s going through, and yeah…we don’t really feel too bad for those girls who are simply portrayed as a group of mean bitches. The exception is supposed to be Claudia, who used to be Sara’s friend, but who now enjoys being with the “cool” girls instead. We can see that she initially hesitates when seeing how the others treat Sara, but she soon joins in and does absolutely nothing to stop them. Despite being somewhat portrayed as the “lesser evil” among the girls, I honestly think she’s just as bad, maybe even worse. So yeah, we want to see Sara getting justice, but it plays out more as a drama thriller where the heroine is constantly plagued with differing feelings of both guilt and loyalty to the man who kidnapped her tormentors. And the majority of the villagers are also portrayed as people who aren’t exactly easy to like, including Sara’s own family, with the exception of her dad who seems to be the only person she’s got an okay relationship with.

Piggy aka Cerdita is a not a typical revenge film or slasher, but as a drama thriller about a bullied girl who ends up fighting quite the dilemma. Who to choose: the serial killer who saved you from your bullies, or the bullies and villagers who couldn’t really give a shit about you? In a regular slasher the answer to that question would have been obvious, but this movie is taking a more realistic approach. Sara never turns into some kind of badass heroine, but instead she’s coming to her own decisions despite her conflicting feelings. Definitely worth a watch, and an interesting take on how a bullied person would deal with having an evil savior.

Writer and director: Carlota Pereda
Country & year: Spain, 2023
Original title: Cerdita
Actors: Laura Galán, Richard Holmes, Carmen Machi, Irene Ferreiro, Camille Aguilar, Claudia Salas, José Pastor, Fernando Delgado-Hierro, Julián Valcárcel, Amets Otxoa
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10399608/

Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever (2023)

Posted on July 2, 2024July 9, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

It’s been approximately 30 years since the events of Nightwatch aka Nattevakten (1994), and the survivors aren’t actually faring so well. Martin is a complete wreck, not just because of his obvious PTSD but also because his wife Kalinka committed suicide after never getting over the trauma this incident caused her. He’s without a job and haven’t even received any welfare pay, and he tries to chase away his demons with drink and pills. Yeah, that always works great. His daughter, Emma, is trying to help him out but it’s apparent that she hasn’t properly processed her mother’s suicide either, which isn’t too surprising considering that she’s the one who found her. Not to mention the impact it all had on Jens, who bailed ass out of the country and have been living in Thailand ever since. Trauma has indeed dug its claws deep into everyone involved. Emma was never told about what happened, but when looking through some old newspaper clippings she finds out about the serial killer Wörmer and her parents involvement with him. History often likes to repeat itself, and Emma ends up taking a night watch job at – you guessed it – the exact same place as her father worked. Good choice! And when she finds out that Wörmer is still alive and just woke up from his coma, she wants to meet him in the hopes of finally exorcising both her father’s demons and her own. Unwittingly, she just ends up letting even more demons loose…

Nightwatch – Demons are Forever (original title: Nattevagten – Dæmoner går i arv) is a danish thriller/horror movie from 2023. It’s a direct sequel to the first film from 1994, Nightwatch, and both are written and directed by Ole Bornedal. A sequel almost 30 years later may feel like an odd choice, but considering how this movie became a danish cult classic back in the days it’s a fun way to re-introduce the film while giving a follow-up to the story, including the original actors coming back to play their earlier roles. It’s definitely a nice watch for those who have seen the original, and while some may argue that a sequel this long afterwards feels unnecessary, I’d like to counter-argue with what the hell kind of sequel these days are really “necessary“ anyways..?

Just like the first film, there is a mystery and several red herrings attempting to throw you off guard. While this isn’t as effective as in the first, it’s compelling enough to keep you engaged. The red thread here is trauma and its effect on everyone involved, and while this sequel can’t even come close to being as effectual for today’s audience as the first film was (which would have been a bit weird to expect anyways) it’s still a well-crafted thriller. It’s also a lot of fun to see the old actors from the first film getting back together again for this sequel, and the actor playing Emma, Fanny Bornedal, is the director’s own daughter. It was also enjoyable to see Ulf Pilgaard back as the serial killer Wörmer, although quite reduced due to old age (83 years) he manages to come off as an intimidating predator who of course still likes to repeatedly listen to some creepy-ass old song (Lille Lise lett på tå).

Overall, Nightwatch – Demons are Forever is a decent sequel that comes incredibly late, but better late than never as they say. Or at least that’s true in some cases. Sure, there’s nothing groundbreaking here, and if we are going to be perfectly honest there wasn’t really any of that in the original either, it was just presented to an audience where the majority had never seen something like that before. The film offers up a nice thriller mystery and will probably work best for those who have seen the original, although it isn’t a must.

Writer and director: Ole Bornedal
Country & year: Denmark, 2023
Original title: Nattevagten – Dæmoner går i arv
Actors: Fanny Leander Bornedal, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Alex Høgh Andersen, Sara Viktoria Bjerregaard, Kim Bodnia, Vibeke Hastrup, Pelle Emil Hebsgaard, Ulf Pilgaard, Sonja Richter, Paprika Steen
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6318608/

Prequel: Nightwatch (1994)

RED GLOVES – Horror Short

Posted on June 30, 2024June 30, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

In 1980s NYC, a young dancer at the top of her class is stalked during a lonely night of rehearsing by a shadowy figure wearing red gloves.

Horror Short Sunday is here again, and this time we’ve seen Red Gloves from 2023, directed by Santiago Saba Salem and written by Santiago Saba Salem and Drew Maxwell Weiss. We’re in the 1980’s, and some dancers in NYC are rehearsing. One of them stays alone in order to keep practicing, and of course, someone’s out to get her! Someone we can’t fully see except from noticing them wearing red gloves in typical giallo-style (well, the usual style is black gloves, but everyone’s got their own fashion preferences). It’s impossible to not notice the apparent Suspiria-vibes in this one, and it’s like a love letter to both the aforementioned film and the giallo genre.

Director: Santiago Saba Salem
Writer: Santiago Saba Salem, Drew Maxwell Weiss
Country & year: USA, 2023
Actors: Isabelle Phillips, Ed Malone, Ruth Kavanagh, Madison Grace Johnson, Olivia Greco, Alexandra Osorio, Maya Tsuruki-Holden
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt28499552/

GOOD HEAD – Horror Short Film

Posted on June 23, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

When Hollywood mega-star Cooper Bradley goes to a special-effects lab in Atlanta to get his head molded for his latest film, all hell breaks loose. Not only must he try to escape from this freakish funhouse of props and make-up, but in the process he must retrieve his very soul, which the VFX master has stolen.

For this Horror Short Sunday, we’ve decided to present Good Head from 2021, being shown on Alter. It’s written and directed by Matt Servitto, who also plays the role as the Hollywood star who ends up having a not so pleasant experience in a special effects lab. It’s fun and energetic, with comedy moments that are both crazy and freakish. Imagine having to fight with Jackie Chan’s hands, the butt of Meryl Streep and seeing Jennifer Lopez’s leg hop around? Yep, all of that actually happens here. It’s Voodoo, baby!

Director: Matt Servitto
Writer: Matt Servitto
Country & year: USA, 2021
Actors: Henry Zebrowski, Matt Servitto, Addie Weyrich, Dan Triandiflou
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt15463340/

OCCUPANT – Horror Short

Posted on June 16, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

A quiet evening at home takes a bizarre turn when a man goes to investigate strange noises in his yard.

It’s Horror Short Sunday once again! This time, we take a look at Occupant which is a horror short that starts with a man’s mundane, everyday life: he’s putting his daughter to bed, and tells her a good-night story. Then, after speaking briefly to his wife, he hears strange noises from outside and decides to go investigate. It’s very simple, yet effective enough to be both atmospheric and provide enough mystery to keep you guessing what will eventually happen!

Director: Peter Cilella
Writer: Peter Cilella
Country & year: USA, 2018
Actors: Caroline Jennings, Dan O’Brien, Lauran September
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt8760354/

SEA DEVIL – Horror Short Film

Posted on June 9, 2024June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

An American fisherman attempts to smuggle two Cuban immigrants into Miami, passing them off as day laborers. While the group trawls for shrimp, a fourth person boards the boat, carrying a secret at the bottom of the Ocean.

Sea Devil is a creepy sea monster horror short!

Director: Dean Colin Marcial, Brett Potter
Writer: Dean Colin Marcial, Brett Potter
Country & year: USA, 2014
Actors: Moise Brutus, Antoni Corone, Taylor Rouviere, Mario Ernesto Sánchez
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt2503344/

TWISTED TALES: A SUPER 8 ANTHOLOGY – Horror Short

Posted on June 2, 2024June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

A deliciously depraved trilogy shot entirely on Super 8 film. Set in the ’60s, THE LANDLORD’S DAUGHTER, a couple’s twisted desires lead them to abduct an engaged couple. BAG FOR LIFE is a psycho-sexual thriller about a murderous bag with an unhealthy attraction to its owner. Lastly, THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE about a psychopathic office worker who embarks on a deadly rampage to exterminate anybody unlucky enough to share her peculiar name.

Twisted Tales: A Super 8 Anthology is a weird horror short shot on one continuous roll of Super 8 film, made by the same director of Rhyme or Die!

TWISTED TALES: A SUPER 8 ANTHOLOGY - Horror Short

Director: Max Lincoln
Writer: Max Lincoln
Country & year: UK, 2024
Actors: Abayomi Oniyide, Rose Lucas, Aiste Gramantaite, Giovanni Mocchi, Victor Alli, Daisy Moore, Amanda Urvall Nyren, Alicia Britt, Cherrelle Skeete, Shiloh Coke, Elizabeth West, Nick Finegan

THE BRASS ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM – Horror Short

Posted on May 26, 2024June 12, 2024 by HorrorGhouls

The Man sits, sipping tea in an endless void, until a chandelier comes crashing down. The pieces transform into a Woman and the newly met couple wonder endlessly as the void presents objects and events that disrupt time, space and logic.

The Brass Elephant in the Room is a surreal and really strange horror short with a dark fairytale vibe to it.

THE BRASS ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM - Horror Short

Director: Junior Day, Eleanor Dolan
Writer: Junior Day
Country & year: UK, 2020
Actors: Tatjana Anders, Edward Saunders
IMDb: www.imdb.com/title/tt12032850/