We were holding this back, but for some reason, multiple versions of this same tale/concept have been popping up. Two of them appear to be by the same team (same guy playing the dad), only the gender of the kid is different. We found this one to be the most effective, by far. No gore, no violence at all (the artistic team lets your imagination do all the freaky work), but still the stuff of nightmares, and clocking in at two minutes. That is not an easy task. Watch it below… lights off, of course!
The reason that more than one film-maker has used this theme, we discovered a couple of days ago, is that it was based on a very creepy and raved-about Reddit post. If you’re in even a little bit of an unstable mood, and are having trouble sleeping, we recommend that you save the creepy sub-reddits for the daytime. The disturbing, creepy threads are clearly indicated by the name of the category (such as “letsnotmeet), so there’s no danger of you suddenly getting the shit scared out of you if you’re paying attention to the topics. When it comes to reading some of them alone at night, you have been warned…
“The Little Witch” was produced, directed, and filmed by Alasdair McBroom – check out his official site right here. The story was adapted from a version by Reddit user who goes by the name of “justanothermuffledvo”.
Don’t forget: if you know of a really good short horror film we haven’t featured yet, please share it with us so we can give it a gander and (if it’s creepy enough) post it! You can put a link, or the title, in the comments section.
So did you see the post here where we featured “Lights Out,” which won the prize–along with some awards– for Best Direction in the Bloody Cuts “Who’s There?” Film Challenge? No? If you haven’t, watch these two shorts first and save Lights Out, the strongest of all of the series of shorts that take place in the same apartment with the same actress.
First, though, check these out. Both have very little gore and could probably be suitable for kids (if they want a real scare). There’s also little-to-no dialogue, and only one (human) character. They also can frighten you even when watched in broad daylight.
First, there’s “Pictured”…
Then, because she didn’t have enough damn sense to move out of this apartment, “Cam Closer” below:
Finally, whether or not you’ve seen “Lights Out”, we DARE you to watch (or re-watch) with the lights off and the sound cranked.
This is the eighth and final short film in the series from Bloody Cuts (unless you count the example short they made for the “Who’s There” contest, which we’ll also be posting), and while it’s too bad it’s the last, it’s certainly an excellent one to finish out the series with. This is more fun the less you know going in, but I should note it is definitely gory enough to not be suitable for kids. Crank the sound on this one, and not just because it’s scarier that way, but because of the amazing sound/foley art (worth an award right there). The same goes for the visuals- anything less than HD and you’ll be missing out on some amazing effects.
Just to give you an idea of how much work (and blood) was put into Don’t Move, it features the biggest cast, the most deaths, the heaviest visual FX and the largest crew to date; over thirty people came together to make the bloodiest & tensest cut yet. Oh, and the Don’t Move shoot was so messy that fake carpet had to be laid down… and director Anthony Melton was forced to spend Monday morning cleaning blood off the walls. (Source: Bloody Cuts UK)
So what are you waiting for (other than daylight)?
Now THAT is how you fucking end a gory short horror film. BOOM! We’re not surprised that the director’s favorite horror film is Hellraiser (I don’t know about you, but I don’t think that visual will be leaving my head for weeks months). If you want to know about Don’t Move, we’ve got plenty of goodies for you. Read on!
Here is what Bloody Cuts UK officially has to say about “Don’t Move” (on their website):
‘Don’t Move’ represents the directorial début of Bloody Cuts producer Anthony Melton, and his love of horror classics such as Hellraiser ensured ‘Don’t Move’ has become a tense, disturbing and brutally bloody short.
Developed as a challenge to create a horror script with little movement and hardly any dialogue, ‘Don’t Move’ crawled out of writer David Scullion’s twisted brain in 2010, where he promptly left it on a shelf to gather dust. When producer Ben Franklin discovered it in a basement two years later, Bloody Cuts quickly realized they had found their Episode 8.
Funded by the fantastic generosity of Horror-lovers all over the globe, the month-long Kickstarter campaign for ‘Don’t Move’ raised over £3000 and ensured Anthony’s ambitious vision was able to be realized… in spectacular fashion.
‘Don’t Move’ once again uses the special effects make-up talents of Neill Gorton’s Millennium FX (Doctor Who), who continue to bring their fresh and terrifying creations to life, and stars an excellent cast that includes Rachel Bright, Ian Whyte (Game of Thrones, Prometheus) and Jake Hendricks (Hollyoaks).
Incidentally, director / producer Anthony Melton’s favourite horror film is Hellraiser and the demonic entity in ‘Don’t Move’ was designed & created by industry-legend Cliff Wallace… who actually worked on the original Hellraiser! An absolute honour.
Trivia: the voice of ‘Paul’ at the beginning of ‘Don’t Move’ isn’t actually voiced by actor Martin Skipper. This was added later by Ben Tillett, who is also the director, writer and ‘Narrator’ of https://horrorboom.wordpress.com/wp-admin/post-new.phpSuckablood… did you spot the Phantom in the opening Steadicam Shot? [Ed. note: we still haven’t. Did you any of you guys?]
Here we have is the “making of” video; highly recommended watching… they worked their ASSES off on this one (and there’s less CGI than I thought).
I’m surprised they managed to shoot it over one weekend, I mean got-damn, it’s pretty elaborate.
Here’s something we thought was really cool. There’s a WordPress blog called Write-Shoot-Cut, and this page features an introduction by Neil Rolland (who got to see Don’t Move on the big screen as part of a special showcase event at the Bootleg Film Festival, Edinburgh) and a piece by the screenwriter of Don’t Move, David Scullion. He rightly points out that the script is ridiculously tame compared to the final product (but don’t let that stop you from reading it). Our personal favorite extra goodie we found is the actual script, a 12-page .PDF file that you can download on the page; here’s the link again.
Here’s the Kickstarter campaign page for Don’t Move, which also makes for interesting reading …and watching. There’s a cool video “pitch” which I can’t embed, so check it out on Kickstarter. I’m suddenly VERY bummed all over again that Bloody Cuts will not be continuing in its current form.
Straight up! This one won’t scare the bejeezus out of you, give you nightmares, insomnia, possibly soiled underwear, etc like “Lights Out,” our pick for the scariest short horror film of May.
“Cut” is another winner from this cool contest for Best Cinematography, and we enjoyed it as much as the judges clearly did. This little flick was written and directed by Peter Lemper. Take a gander below…
By the way, the Bloody Cuts Horror Challenge sported some pretty impressive judges; more on that later, but how would you feel if Joe Dante, the Soska Sisters, or Gale Ann Hurd picked your entry as an award-winner for this challenge? Now imagine all three of them plus seven others (plus Drew Daywalt, who is mainly known for a series of short horror films including the pretty goddamned scary short Bedfellows, widely agreed to be one of the most frightening short films of the last ten years) said your film stood out over all the other entries.
More entries will definitely be posted, we’re going through them now. It’s taking a little longer because we need to watch most of them before it gets dark out. Right now this writer is currently keeping the sleeping hours of a crack whore,* thus the delay. Stay tuned, and in the meantime, here’s links to some really nightmarish shorts we’ve featured as “Scariest of the Week”. Not all the ones we EVER poster (you can type “horror short” in the Search box up top if you feel like going all of them at once, which we don’t recommend if you need to sleep sometime in the next 24 hours); for this list, we stuck to four Drew Daywalt creations. At least one of these, but probably all of them, will scare the shit out of you.
(Seriously, don’t watch them all in a row after dark. You have now been officially warned).
*NOT voluntarily. Mrs. Horror Boom here has blown off entire careers so I can keep my own hours and sleep till noon if I want instead of getting up when it’s still dark out to go to an office that I don’t even want to be at. Being self-employed is really, really cool, but I didn’t do it to have the complexion of someone in the first stages of zombie infection. Let’s hope by oh, Independence Day, I’ll work my way around to WAY more daylight so I don’t have to start taking vitamin D supplements.
HORROR BOOM 