The Whisper in the Woods is a half hour long short horror film that mixes arthouse and the supernatural into an interesting mix. This comes from the ever reliable Jeff Payne (The Pale Faced Lady trilogy), someone who is the king of editing, and who had many roles on this film, including directing, writing, producing, editing, as well as being responsible for the cinematography. While this is again very nicely edited indeed, I did feel the subject matter and what occurs felt quite similar to the style of The Pale Faced Lady.
An intro poem tells the tragic story of a woman accused of being a witch, she was dragged from her house and had her eyes gouged out, before being killed by angry locals. They soon found she was even more dangerous in death, and now she haunts the remote woodland where she was killed, cursing all who dare go onto her land.
In present day, with her father having been terminally ill and recently dying in hospital, Hannah (Hannah Swayze) and her friend (Kasey Williams) have gone on a camping trip, so that Hannah can try and process her thoughts. Of course though, they have chosen the site that the blind witch roams, and soon the horror begins. Finding herself all alone, Hannah sets out to escape the area, eventually finding herself at a large remote abandoned mansion.
The majority of this is shot in black and white, with plenty of film grain and audio effects to give the impression this is an old horror film. Payne does plenty of what he liked to do in his previous supernatural films, having the antagonist hiding in plain sight in the back of shots. This is used to best effect when Hannah is exploring the old house in the second half of the short. Mixed in with this are a bunch of arthouse style nightmare sequences that show a variety of images in quick succession. Best, and most weird moment was when Hannah is having a nightmare about a doctor telling her, her dad is dying, with the actor playing the actor grinning maniacally at the camera after delivering his lines, while the shot lingers on him in real time for about a minute straight.
The plot was straight out of The Blair Witch Project, with this basically being a condensed version of that film's story, with the change that the witch is actually shown on screen, but otherwise almost hitting the same points in certain ways, and of course this was traditionally shot, not found footage. Swayze was fine as the protagonist, but she never really looked scared, it was more a look of curiosity on her face, and she didn't really seem to have any reaction to her good friend apparently being killed quite early on in the short.
This was just as well edited as I expected from Payne, and the effects used to simulate this being an old film was unexpected, a change in direction from the typically very clean filmmaking techniques used. I did think that storywise, this was a little too similar to The Pale Faced Lady, I also wish there had been more of a story, as often this felt more like it was going for atmosphere than trying to tell a decent yarn. Regardless, this was a good, well made short. The best thing about this is that The Whisper in the Woods can currently be viewed on YouTube for free.
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