NOTE: Yes, this is a re-print of an article for 10/27/2012. Due to missing over a week of postings in late May (got kicked in the ass by pneumonia and the unexpected death of a good friend) things got pretty sparse here as everything else went out the window at the time …so I’m filling them in (and back-dating them for the days we were on the disabled list) in with cool stuff. Enjoy.
Yes, Grace (2006) is indeed the short film written and directed by Paul Solet that the 2009 feature film of the same name is based on. If you’ve seen the 90-minute version, I’m sure you know the plot. Here’s how I would describe it (since the official synopsis is too spoiler-ish): A young woman, Madeline, who is in her third trimester of pregnancy, and her husband have a very bad car wreck, mainly caused by him driving like an asshole. He is killed and she is able to crawl from the wreck, but sadly the baby does not survive. Madeline makes the difficult decision to carry the deceased baby to term. That’s enough horror for at least two feature-length movies already …but, believe it or not, things are about to go downhill and become far more frightening and disturbing from there.
Usually, the above is a warm, comforting phrase. Mama’s home. Mama is here. Shhhh, my baby, all is well, you’re safe now, Mamá won’t let anyone hurt her babies. Not in this case; in the context of this short scary-ass film (and the feature-length movie of the same name coming in late January 2013) it is NOT good news.
Not at all.
Well, according to Horror Boom’s year-end stats from WordPress, not only did this three-minute short feature get more hits than every other short horror film we featured combined, it even crept into the top five posts of 2012. So, we were psyched to see a HD version with a brand spankin’ new intro from Guillermo Del Toro. He explains how badly it frightened him and why he saw potential for a full-length movie …that would also scare the hell out of everyone. Since this writer first saw the trailer in Fall of 2012, I’m now able to watch trailers for the feature-length Mama(opening January 18, 2013)after dark …as long as I’m not feeling jittery in the first place.
Am I brave enough, though, to watch this short film after dark? Not really. No. This second version does have alternate footage, but it’s no less scary for the switch. Daytime, lights on, had to turn the sound down just to give to short film a watch and ensure it was the real thing before we posted this new version. You think something can’t be scary that is only three minutes long, with no blood and gore? Watch this, because you will find yourself mistaken.
Even if the movie is mediocre –which we seriously doubt; as a rule, these Spanish film-makers* know how to inspire nightmares above and beyond that of what most US film-makers are capable of– this short, written and directed by Andy Muschietti, is still actively terrifying. We’re now working up an entire piece on it, since as of this writing it may very well be the most anticipated horror film of Winter/Spring 2013. Right now, though, we just want to get the film with the new intro up. MUCH more coverage is coming soon, keep your eyeballs out for it right here on Horror Boom.
Yes, Grace (2006) is indeed the short film written and directed by Paul Solet that the 2009 feature film of the same name is based on. If you’ve seen the 90-minute version, I’m sure you know the plot. Here’s how I would describe it (since the official synopsis is too spoiler-ish): A young woman, Madeline, who is in her third trimester of pregnancy, and her husband have a very bad car wreck, mainly caused by him driving like an asshole. He is killed and she is able to crawl from the wreck, but sadly the baby does not survive. Madeline makes the difficult decision to carry the deceased baby to term. That’s enough horror for at least two feature-length movies already …but, believe it or not, things are about to go downhill and become far more frightening and disturbing from there.
Cover of DVD release of Grace (The 2009 feature film, based on the short film Grace, 2006)
The best working link for the six-minute short horror film I could find was on Fearnet.com (see below). BUT! Do NOT read the description, don’t look, just start watching, since the description spoils every plot element from start to finish. Repeat (because I hate spoilers and when people just relate the plot from start to finish in a description before you even watch something), unless you’ve seen Grace already (the short film OR the 2009 feature), just hit the play button and go full screen. Oh, and do not watch while eating …or if you’re breast-feeding. Even if you’re not, trust me my fellow horror fan chicks, you’ll be crossing your arms across your chest like I was!
I highly recommend you do NOT watch this film if you’re pregnant unless you never get scared or upset by anything you watch in a movie, ever (though the French horror film À l’intérieur (AKA Inside, 2007) makes Grace look like The Brady Bunch, and I’d never suggest Inside to someone with even a pregnant relative, let alone even begin to explain the plot points to anyone who is pregnant). Grace also doesn’t take an especially low-key approach when it comes to gore, either, so back out now if you’re easily upset, or offended. I’m pretty jaded, but even ol’ Mrs. Horror Boom here winced several times. Intense, brutal, and frightening, Grace could very well sign you up for a nightmare… don’t say I didn’t warn you!
Grace stars Liza Weil, Brian Austin Green, and Susan Foley (the feature-length film starred Cabin Fever ‘s leading lady Jordan Ladd as Madeline). Oh, and the end titles just credit baby Grace as played by “herself”. Though it’d be way creepier if they listed a name, now that I think of it.
If you want to go behind the scenes, the below version has a really cool commentary. There’s also a short about the make-up effects used; drop me a line or a comment below if you’d like me to add it to this post.
I don’t know if enjoy! is the right phrase to sign off on Grace with, so I’ll go with George Romero‘s traditional sign-off: stay scared!
Do you know how beautiful you are?-Madeline, to her daughter
Well, it’s getting closer to Halloween, so I figured I’d toss in a bonus scary short film (since I can’t really say there are TWO “Scariest Short Horror Films of the Week”). This was in my private stash I save for future Scariest Shorts; I like to have a few lined up in advance for security, plus I set the bar kind of high and now it can take me sitting and sifting through a dozen of them until I find one that’s nightmare-worthy. Shit, I’d post one a day up until Halloween if I wasn’t worried about running out.
This bonus film is also from the old Daywalt Fear Factory, and it’s called Suicide Girl. No, not the trashy kind who looks like she fell down a flight of stairs carrying an open tackle box (sorry, not a fan), the kind who is just sad and had all she could take. It’s also always nice to see someone in one of those shorts get what he or she deserves… turn the lights off, the sound up, and check this out…
This is not only creepy and scary as hell, but could also work as a nice anti-bullying public service message! This was written and directed by Drew Daywalt. I need to start checking out his ongoing web series, Camera Obscura.
Is it possible to scare the living shit out of a viewer when the short is less than two minutes long, and the setting is bathed in warm, cheerful sunlight (accompanied by a sweet lullaby, no less)? Yes, it is. However, I’m trying to think of another horror short that accomplishes this and coming up empty. For that alone, this terrifying, rare gem deserves some sort of award.
This one was directed by Marichelle Daywalt. Short …but far from sweet. Listen to the lullaby lyrics right before it cuts out (someone had to point it out to me, I was too busy taking deep breaths to avoid a panic attack)!
This was actually going to be a post for “Scariest Japanese Urban Legend of the Month”, but I scared the shit out of myself just researching it at 3AM. I figured oh, it’s not going to be that scary, because I bet I’ve already heard of it.Whoop-de-doo. Twenty minutes into researching the legend of “Hikiko” I heard something heavy and loud fall on the (hardwood) floor in the kitchen and almost had a goddamned heart attack. Figured one of the cats wanted attention, because it turned out to be a giant plastic binder clip that one of them pushed off when I went out to look. I calmed down and then researched more–bad idea when there’s a windy rainstorm outside. All I needed was thunder and lightning.
I was already realizing 1. I should probably stop and write something else for tonight, as the research just kept getting creepier and 2. I was going to have to write about it when it was light out if I wanted to fall asleep while it was still dark, when I heard something else fall off the kitchen counter (not as loudly). I went out hesitantly and saw an empty Dansani water bottle had fallen and was rolling slowly on the floor. Then I realized both cats were asleep in the other room.
At this point, I would just like to thank whoever is in charge up there for the gift of a very patient husband, who woke up when I asked him to and demonstrated how it was a draft, not something freaky and supernatural that blew it off the counter. Thank you.
Laugh all you want! Just imagine watching THIS (below) with the sound on, after dark, and hearing sudden strange noises down the dark hall from your room:
Plus, this is just a snippet of a longer video about the legend I’m going to post, too, and I had to turn the sound down ten minutes in. After that I decided to bookmark it and try to pretend I hadn’t seen it until the sun came out. The first bookmark tag I used was “scary as fuck.”
…like a gift from the past… it was a sign from God, I thought… a sign that there is comfort, there is joy, and all I have to do is take it…
Spoon, subtitled AMonologue of Terror, is another quality, very scary short written and directed by Drew Daywalt. It’s a little more subtle and more of a slow burn than the other shorts from him I’ve posted –but don’t let that fool you. It’s scary as hell. By the way, be sure to watch from start to finish.
Really great writing from start to finish, and Christa Campbell sells it, proving she’s more than just a beautiful Scream Queen face. And just when I thought there wasn’t going to be a jump…
“…A sign that there is joy, and all I have to do is take it…”
The stand-outs so far (according to several sources) were Xavier Gens (who made the brutal Frontier/s and The Divide; his name always gets dropped, and rightly so, when people mention ‘New French Extremist Horror’) and his segment called “X to XXL”, where a woman, “takes the ultimate action to reduce her body size”.
“T is for Talk” (2011), directed and co-written by Peter Haynes, was a top vote-getter in the “26th Director” ABCs of Death contest. Of course, that was back when the voting window for the contest was still open, which I managed to totally miss, thus this series to share the best other shorts with a wider audience. I’m pretty sure you’ll see why; it packs a hell of a wallop into four minutes. This is definitely one of the most intense entries, and isn’t something you should watch if you’re NOT in the mood for something dark, nasty…and very original. Oh, and if you have a pounding headache, I recommend waiting until your head’s back to normal (you’ll see why pretty fast). Check out the very NSFW, intense “T is for Talk”, from New Zealand, below!
Damn! A prequel to that short could be interesting in the right hands. Anyway, that’s eighteen down, seven to go (I think. I’ll do the math later). You can go back and read the first three posts, each with five picks either embedded or linked–some were only on Vimeo or the official voting contest page via the ‘related’ links below, or you can watch the first five entries (plus the introduction) here, the second batch of entries here, and the third bunch of five entries—which has one of the sickest entries in the series– here. I also went and posted a link (I couldn’t embed it) to one that I meant to post, but missed, a couple of weeks ago back in September, which you can check out here. Enjoy, and expect the last eight entries by the time of the full-length movie’s release, which should give me plenty of time since the release date got bumped way the fuck back to January 31st for VOD, and motherfucking March for a limited theatrical run (sigh). I read three reviews from sources I trust, and they said it was kind of a mixed bag; some were more toilet humor/gross-out* than scary or gory (or worth four minutes of your time).
Anyway, now that reviews are coming in, the reviewers said there were some great segments that made The ABCs of Death worth sitting through. The stand-outs so far (according to several sources) were Xavier Gens (who made the brutal Frontier/s and The Divide; his name always gets dropped, and rightly so, when people mention ‘New French Extremist Horror’) and his segment called “X to XXL”, where a woman, “takes the ultimate action to reduce her body size”. My guess it she does a little whittling down at home, taking matters into her own hands by using a sharp blade.** Another standout is supposed to be “L is for Libido,” dealing with (I am not making this up) a psychotic masturbation contest (worse than a biscuit party, I assume) –gee, how could THAT go horribly wrong in an unrated horror movie?–that ‘ends with sick and deadly results.’ I’m not proud of admitting this, but …SOLD!
Right now, I really want to see what Banjong Pisathanakun (half the team from Shutter and Alone ) does with his four minutes …and with what letter of the alphabet and title. N is for Natre? S is for Siamese Twin?
Well, that’s seventeen down and eight to go! More to come, definitely before the holidays (and probably sooner).
*I wonder if any of them had to (or needed to for the purpose of rating them, no-one held a gun to my head making me watch all of them, it was just too late in my project to back-pedal by then) sit through “T is for Testosterone Replacement Therapy”, “T is for Tentacle Rape“, or “T is for Tampon”? Those weren’t anywhere near scary, they didn’t have a plot, two out of the three were so misogynistic I felt like punching whoever was responsible for them in the teeth, and they didn’t even try to be entertaining –on any level. I got the feeling they only made the films because they had some serious issues and/or really filthy sexual fetishes to work through. Through the years, I’ve picked up on the fact that self-indulgence usually doesn’t make for an end product entertaining for anyone but the artist. Consider yourself warned if you’re somehow still compelled to watch them …especially if you’re eating at the time.
**For a while now, I actually have been fleshing out (no pun intended, I should get of my tired ass and take a stab at grabbing the thesaurus before half my comments sound like The Cryptkeeper introducing a story, boils and ghouls ) an outline for a short horror story, where a woman with some serious issues hates her body –and doesn’t have the money to go pay for lipo or another medical procedure. At the end, she really goes over the edge and tries the do-it-yourself approach with craving knives and maybe a vacuüm cleaner or other suction device. The scariest part? I’m afraid if I Googled or otherwise researched this, there will turn out to be not one but a ton of cases of people who already tried to do it. Self-surgery, not writing a short story about it, I mean. There’s no way that’s going to end well…
…That I posted the scary-ass theatrical trailer for last week. After I watched the Mama short below (in the middle of the night, only one awake in the house, you know, the stupid viewing method I keep swearing I’m going to stop doing) I had a nightmare. A very specific nightmare; the kind you know a certain something horror-related that you watched before bed-time inspired.
So what WAS I thinking when I watched it after dark, alone in the house? It was probably related to the fact that I’d just spent a boring half an hour searching for scary-ass shorts to share it with you fellow horror fans, watching a few horror shorts claiming to be SUPER!! SCARY!!! that weren’t too scary, original, or even that gracefully put-together. As I discovered with the Scariest Short of the Week (Bedfellows) that I posted two weeks ago, just because a short is less than four minutes long doesn’t mean it can’t be well-made, tightly edited, and scare the living shit out of you. Longer ones (in the eight-to-ten-minute range) could also be sleep-with-the-lights on scary (or TRY to sleep with the lights on scary, yet you still end up wide-awake) as well; intense, perfectly paced, and a little too memorable than you’d like to experience right before bedtime – see my post on Cleansed, the scariest short of LAST week.
yes, go Go GO GO!
Well, not the case last night. So anyway, I was just about to say the hell with it and watch the end of 2007’s The Orphanage* (review coming – it was even more haunting than I expected, ALSO a Del Toro-presented production by the way, and I can’t recommend it enough) when I remembered something. Hey, wasn’t that upcoming, ultra-creepy Mama movie that I posted the ‘Spooky-ass Trailer’ for recently actually based on a short film by the same director? Well, might as well see if… oh, hey, here it was! Popped up right away in the search! I’d just watched several horror shorts claiming to be SUPER!SCARY! that just ended up being, well …stupid. How could this be too freaky to watch before bedtime?
Watch it below to judge for yourself. If you’re feeling brave, turn all the lights off and the sound up like I did! Hey, it’s less than four minutes long, right?
Fuck! (I think that was also my one-word You Tube comment I posted after I caught my breath). Yes, indeed, definitely the inspiration for the upcoming movie presented by Guillermo Del Toro, and directed and written by…
*It’s possible the first half of The Orphanage also contributed to my nightmare, and it was the combination of the two, but I hadn’t even got to the really wrenching moments and reveals by time I turned off the TV and conked out last night. Pretty sure it was the short.
Terror always follows the phone call in the middle of the night…
After watching the near-minimalist short film Bedfellows, I have the following statement to make in response to the film’s tagline above: I fucking agree. I must still have vacation-brain, since I made some seriously bad decisions about what to watch when home alone Friday night. I knew I’d be alone in the house after dark for at least another hour, I knew this short had been rated as all-time scariest on Fearnet.com, I was pretty sure I knew what was coming, and yet I suppose I still figured Oh what the hell, it’s less than three minutes long, how scary can it be?
The answer is: one scary, scary, scary, VERY scary short film.
But I didn’t stop there, oh no. I saw there were a couple dozen (at least) short horror films directed by Drew Daywalt. The second one was equally scary, the third made my heart slam clumsily in my chest, and after that I decided to watch them with the sound turned down as low as I could get it without turning it completely off. After one more I was cursing myself and finally, made the one sensible decision I’d made that evening: I decided to watch more in the daylight, when I share them here. Oh, speaking of that, funny story! After experiencing that handful of shorts, I discovered a load of adrenaline in my system even though I was only running on four hours of sleep and losing a fight with a tension headache! That was certainly some co-incidence! I’m only putting up this one (rather than multiple shorts in one entry) because I’d like to not have nightmares when I finally do get to sleep. Whenever that is…
I purchased the vector image from Shutterstock.com for commercial use, then took it from there. If I can get VHS tapes, machetes, and popcorn boxes to add to the explosion, I will!
Good thing I keep the phone on my side of the bed (and even better, my husband almost always sleeps half-on-top of the bedsheets/comforter).
After experiencing those Daywalt shorts, I discovered a load of adrenaline in my system even though I was only running on four hours of sleep and losing a fight with a tension headache! That was certainly some co-incidence!
In other news (not as scary), I’m working on a logo for my Facebook page (not launched yet, but getting there). If you dig the above OR the below images, please do give me some feedback via the comments section below… or tell me which one you prefer. I find/make cool images, then have trouble fitting “Horror Boom” on them.
I wanted it bloodier, so I re-did it below!
I’m working on a logo for my Facebook page (not launched yet, but getting there). If you dig the above OR the below images, please do give me some feedback via the comments section below… or tell me which one you prefer. I find/make cool images, then have trouble fitting “Horror Boom” on them. More of those coming up, along with more just plain terrifying shorts from Mr. Daywalt (and others …but only if they’re scary as hell!
Nope, I do NOT mind waiting several minutes for the fresh batch of popcorn. Really, no hurry at all…
HORROR BOOM 