Why Haven't They Fixed The Cameras Yet? (2020) - Short Horror Film Review

The award winning Why Haven't They Fixed The Camera Yet? is a short four minute horror film directed and co-written by Travis White (along with Disha L. Dinesha). The story takes place mainly from the thoughts of a concerned woman.

A woman (Lee Eddy - Mercy Black) is concerned that the camera in the underground carpark at her work has not been fixed since becoming broken. She worries that due to the amount of crime against women the broken camera in such a secluded spot could be a bad thing. Mainly she worries that a sexist co-worker oh hers, Devin (Lukas King - Grimm) might take advantage of this blind spot for his own needs.

This short is from the perspective of the protagonist character and outside of her inner thoughts there is no actual dialogue spoken aloud. Story wise I had a feeling where this would end up going but it was still fun to see the ride. Flashbacks to an office Christmas party are used to support evidence she has that Devin is not a good person. In a post #metoo world the topics this short covers are relevant. The horror when it occurs is mostly off camera but is an effective moment. Check out Why Haven't They Fixed The Camera Yet? for yourself below, its short length means there is no real excuse not to do so.

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Dead Girl Corps release official music video for their Marilyn Manson cover - Music News

Hollywood, CA based Dead Girls Corp have released the official music video for their cover of Marilyn Manson's Great Big White World cover. The track was released via Monsterman Records on Halloween. As you can tell from the release date I am not exactly up to date with my news inbox.

The press release states "As Covid-19 cripples the world and continues mass shutdowns everywhere, and with the current amount of civil unrest in the USA...we feel the song and video strongly captures this current period in time. Director/DP Stephen Redmond along with editor Alexis Johnston did a great job capturing this mood".

You're Not Alone (2020) - Horror Film Review

On the surface the Eduardo Rodriguez (Fright Night 2, Blood Cell) directed You're Not Alone is yet another horror that centres on a family who are being terrorised by a supernatural presence in their home. This falls further into genericness by having the horror focus around a little girl who may be hiding a dark secret. However, Andrew Wong's story (his feature film debut as a writer) is more clever than it at first seems, while the lead actors here all do pretty great jobs.

After the death of her father, young Isla (Leya Catlett - The Affair) moves in with her mother, Emma (Katia Winter - Sleepy Hollow TV show, Dexter). Emma hasn't had much to do with her daughters life due to suffering mental health problems, but now wants to make amends. However, the arrival of Isla brings with it a series of strange disturbances around the house they are living in. Objects seeming to move around on their own, the alarm system constantly tripping for no apparent reason, and Isla keeps seeing a shadowy figure around the house. Is there something supernatural going on, or is it maybe Emma's mental health problems coming back to haunt her?

Within a short space of time I felt I knew what this film would be about, and it certainly isn't too original. It strays from feeling generic though, as even with having seen this type of story in plenty of other films I was invested mainly thanks to Winter's performance. Via flashbacks to a suicide attempt you get the knowledge that she is a woman with a troubled past. This affects her behaviour in the present, and also provides the notion that maybe what she is experiencing may all be in her head, especially when you factor in hallucinations of slit wrists, and nightmares about similar things. With children in horrors there is always the danger of making them come across as too mature for their young age, something I always find creepy when that isn't the intended effect. For the most part Catlett does a good job, her character is quite quiet which may help her never becoming irritating, but the script on occasion does give her lines that made her sound far more grown up than she should appear. There are a host of side characters, the best of which are Emma's ex boyfriend Mark (Zach Avery - Fury) who carries with him an air of menace, and Emma's best friend, Ashley (Emmy James - Can't Take It Back) who shines despite not getting much screen time with which to make an impact.

Abandoned Dead - Reissue Out Now - Horror Film News

The new colour corrected and digitally enhanced Director's Cut of the 2015 indie horror Abandoned Dead is out on Amazon Prime and IMDB TV and iTunes thanks to Indie Rights.

This horror stars 'scream queen' Sarah Nicklin (Sins of Dracula) and Judith O'Dea (Night of the Living Dead) and is about a security guard who becomes trapped inside a dilapidated inner-city medical clinic where she comes under assault from supernatural forces.

Relentless (2020) - Horror Film Review

Relentless isn't much of a horror, but it straddles the line between drama and survival, while leaving the sole protagonist in a perilous and scary situation. This could be seen as an indie version of Crawl, but with less alligators and less going on. This lack of adventure means Relentless can be far more introspective, with the whole set-up a metaphor for the inner turmoil of the main character.

Jennifer (Rachel Weber - Link) is home alone, with obvious signs of having recently had some sort of accident due to her leg being in a large brace. She carries with her a sense of melancholy, and as she potters around the house there are clues revealed as to what has made her life so lifeless and empty. It is when she is putting a box in the basement that the real world melds together with her inner one, the basement door jams shut trapping her inside. A storm is in full force outside and has led to water leaking into the basement. Initially Jennifer use her imprisonment to delve deep into her bitter memories, but as things get more and more desperate she is forced to take action.

Relentless is a bit of a strange title seeing as how things here don't really get moving until there is but fifteen minutes left of the roughly seventy five minute run time. The action was so late in happening that I began to suspect it never would. On paper having a sole character trapped in a basement not really doing anything for an hour should be dull, but the way the film drips information to the viewer made her journey much more interesting than it should have any right to be. This is a sad movie with a sad protagonist and while the things the character has experienced were alien to me I still felt for her situation. In part this was due to the sombre piano led score, in part to the story told, and in part to Weber, whose portrayal of a woman in a deep depression was, I felt, a good one. The character is on her own for much of the film and so rather than fill the air with talking to herself she is mute throughout. This made the story get told in a far more visual way than would be typically done. The music used is key in bringing the sad feelings, but it never over shadows what is going on, it compliments it.

The Wicked Woods - Now Available on DVD and VOD - Horror Film News

The latest HNN Presents release is The Wicked Woods which has came to DVD and VOD from Bayview Entertainment. The film is about a married woman and her lover who have headed to a remote woodland cabin to discuss their future. Soon they find themselves under assault by forces outside the cabin. So far so The Evil Dead. This force reveals itself in the form of an old man, a nude woman, and cloaked children, and seeks to punish the couple for their actions in life.

This is a Spanish language film with English subtitles and is a HorrorNews.net presentation, it can be purchased on Amazon. It can also be found at Walmart, FYE, TCM Shop, Deep Discount, Oldies.com, Import CDs, Vintage Vinyl and more, in DVD form. VOD platforms include Amazon Prime, Vimeo, iTunes, Tubi, Roku, and MX Player.

Devil in the Woods (2020) - Horror Film Review

Devil in the Woods is a very indie English horror film written and directed by Terence Elliott (co-director of Harvest of the Dead: Halloween Night). Watching this was a comedy of errors for me as I spent the whole experience convinced I knew how this would play out, but my assumptions were very incorrect. Due to those self same assumptions I struggled to take much of what I was seeing seriously.

Four college friends who drifted apart after the mum of one them died, come back together in order to complete a film studies project. The project is to make up at least 60% of their overall grade for the year and so Tess (Francesca Howe - Harvest of the Dead: Halloween Night, Underland) is determined to do a good job. Julian (Daniel Wale - Harvest of the Dead: Halloween Night) has a soft spot for Jess so he is on board to help out, however, stoner Chris (Alec Sleigh - Harvest of the Dead: Halloween Night) refuses to take the project seriously, with his maybe girlfriend Jenny (Amy Joy - Harvest of the Dead: Halloween Night) happy to follow his lead. Eventually the group decide to make a found footage horror, but their trip to the woods to record this has them meet up with a far more sinister group...

The film is 70 minutes long and features acting that while not terrible wasn't as high quality as you might see in other horrors. The performances in part led to my wrong thoughts about where the story would lead. The horror element appears in the films third act, with everything leading to this point mainly being the main story and a subplot involving two Police Officers. The filming a film within a film part of this helped show that maybe the acting isn't as bad as it initially appeared to be, as there is a very noticeable dip in quality when the characters are acting in the film they are creating. There are only a handful of locations used with the majority taking place in woodland, then an office for the officers, and rooms for two of the characters.

Two Twisted Tales (2021) - Short Horror Anthology Film Review

Two Twisted Tales is the latest short film from writer/director Nicholas Michael Jacobs (Genevieve Wreaks Havoc, Genevieve, Tales from Six Feet Under). Their are a couple of novel things going for it. Firstly, it is the first film I have received for review that is due for release in 2021, and secondly, despite being just three minutes in length this manages to cram two different stories into the run time.

This works both as a companion piece to the Genevieve short films, as well as a sequel of sorts to Tales from Six Feet Under. The Visitor (Jacobs) tells two different horror tales via an old cassette deck. The first is about the origins of a creepy doll. The second story is one about a widower (Alexis Beacher) whose online buying habits leads to her taking a chance on a mystery box.

It sounds like originally the plan was to make another entry in his killer doll series, but due to COVID-19 this wasn't possible. Still wanting to create something Jacob changed his plans into this brief anthology. He said that Two Twisted Tales was going for something with a different feel, both due to limited resources and due to wanting to try something new.

With the film relying on the narration of The Visitor the two tales felt more like ideas than fully fleshed out stories. The audio format does transform these into something more akin to a Creepy Pasta story, urban legends given form. The short length of these made for something that was very watchable, sure it would have been nice to get a lot more from these two stories, but as a taster it satisfied. It will be interesting to see if this is the start of a new series for this indie director. Two Twisted Tales is due for release on 1st January 2021 on Amazon Prime Video.

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Beyond Hell (2019) - Horror Film Review

Beyond Hell is an indie horror that was written and directed by Alan Murray (Exposed) in his feature length directorial debut. The film follows a familiar path and as such it was never going to be an essential horror to watch, yet despite some obvious budget limitations this was still relatively fun.

After returning from a vacation to South America, high schooler Seth (Sean Rey - Hemlock Grove) brings with him a new drug he found there, and during a get together with his friends they all take it, expecting a fun time. Wholesome Maryssa (Kearsten Johansson - Exposed) finds herself transported to a Hell dimension where a demonic entity known as Belial (Gavin R. Downes - Exposed) is able to use the girl as a bridge to invade Earth. With one of the friends at the party dead due to all this, Maryssa is blamed and committed to a psychiatric ward. One by one however each of the friends who took the drug are turning up dead in brutal circumstances, Maryssa, Jake (Sebastian Deery) and another friend set out to find a way to sever the connection Belial has to the world.

The general storyline has been done to death countless times before, both better and not as well implemented as this one. Things begin oddly with a prologue that almost seemed like it was taken from a different film entirely. It shows a man (who maybe was Seth) being chased by a load of cultists, before being captured. Aside from an epilogue that took place in the end credits this intro scene didn't seem to have anything to do with anything. If Seth was meant to be brainwashed there was never any indication he was, so it felt like a bizarre inclusion when Seth could have easily just got the drugs from anywhere rather than an Indiana Jones style sequence. Regardless of similarities Beyond Hell was fun once it got going, even if it is constantly let down by sub par special effects. The worst of these is the CG used to simulate the demon world affecting the protagonists, CG tentacles straight out of 2005 are one such eye sore, as are the superimposed zombie hands that 'burst' out of the floor, and on another occasion the wall. Day of the Dead did a similar effect, but practically in 1985, and that one looked a hundred times better than what we are shown here.

A Primitive Evolution releases official music video for Ghost - Music News

Toronto, ON based dark alternative rock band A Primitive Evolution have released a music video for Ghost, taken off their latest album, Becoming. This was directed by Terra Jo McNerthney and produced by Bailey Northcott.

The video for Ghost takes place in a post apocalyptic dreamscape, two survivors follow radio waves in the hope of finding connection. The band said of the song "We'd never written an epic long piece like this before and it really helped seal the album together for us". The track is based on dreams one of the band had after losing his father at the age of 14. Becoming can be downloaded/streamed online, and a physical CD can be purchased here.

Human No More: The Feature (2020) - Horror Film Review

Oh boy, Human No More is one of the more difficult films I have been sent to review for a good while. I kind of had a sinking feeling while watching this that a lot of the themes and story here went over my head by quite a large margin. I fear this review will be as easy to write as remembering all the details of a crazed dream would be. My synopsis and likely other details provided will be the product of my interpretation, likely wrong, but is my springboard into trying to talk about this in a cohesive manner.

Human No More was written and directed by Christopher Alan Broadstone and has a slight anthology feel to it. This is fitting as it features within its two hour run time three different short films, Scream for Me (2000), My Skin! (2002), and Human No More (2004). These segments have appeared in different anthologies over the years, but here they are brought together, helped with actors from the main story also playing parts in those three stories. 
Tony Simmons mainly plays Det. Nemo, a hard boiled detective with a jaded outlook on life. He has gone to a unique club where he drinks and smokes while thinking about a strange case he had, tracking a serial killer that came to be known as the Mirror Murders Killer (Gabriel Sigal). Whether this place is real, or if Simmons has dived deep into his own 'mind palace' is never made clear, but here he encounters the killer who provides a long essay into the pointlessness of existence.

While the three short films here would indicate this to be an anthology there is so much of the rest of the movie that these felt more like little side stories. My Skin! is the first of these side stories and reminded me a lot of the TV show sequences in the Max Payne video games. In this one a man thinking he has gotten away with the perfect crime is horrified to find that someone with almost supernatural power (also Simmons) is Hell bent on dismantling the perfectness of the crime to grant a dead woman retribution from beyond the grave.
In Scream for Me two serial killers (played by Simmons and Sigal) happen to converge on the house of a young woman on the same ill fated night.
Finally, the Human No More segment featured the same detective character, I believe this one was towards the film's conclusion, it sheds more light on what made this character so bleak and jaded.

Insomniac Frightmare Killers - Horror Film News and Trailer

I don't have much details on Insomniac Frightmare Killers, but what I do have is a trailer, a synopsis, a cast, and a release window for this. This very indie horror is about a disturbed insomniac loner whose nightmares start to become reality as he becomes more and more detached from reality. 

The best thing about this is that it stars Nicholas M. Garofolo (Sweet Revenge, Deranged Foxhole) who never fails to have a real screen presence. It is also set to feature Lauren Collier, Taryn Danielle, Meredith Binder, Emmeline Prior, Megan Miles, Laura Pelliccia, Hana Leigh, Dave Sweeney, Drew Samuelsen and Steven Wishman. Insomniac Frightmare Killers is due to be released in Spring of next year.

Beasts Clawing at Straws (2020) - Thriller Film Review

A disclaimer to start with, Young-hoon Kim's Beasts Clawing at Straws is not a horror film, I do admit to being drawn in by the title, plus being a South Korean movie made me also interested in watching it. From the synopsis this sounded like a crime drama and that is mostly fitting. The varied cast of desperate and greedy characters is what sounded most interesting.

A former restaurant owner reduced to working in a sauna one day discovers a bag full of money in one of the lockers, and decides to take it home with him. Meanwhile a whole bunch of characters play out their lives, as the film progresses you find out just how this disparate people came to be involved in the series of events that led to the bag of money getting left at the sauna in the first place.

This was a well made thriller that had a great cast to it. Despite there being four or five storylines going on this never got confusing, there was a gentle placing of the pieces of the puzzle. The main cast of eight characters all end up crossing paths at one point or another. These include a local crime boss, a detective, a customs officer, a cleaner, a prostitute and more. There is quite a bit of murder here but despite that this never felt dark. You get the impression that none of these characters are innocent, and their desperation leads to a lot of the movie's events. This results in plenty of quasi-farcical moments that help keep the film's darkly comedic tone to it, moments such as when some gangsters accidentally chase their victim to death for instance. I enjoyed how threaded the different plots all where, but this was always competent in how they thread, but there wasn't any huge surprises.