I have to admit, I was originally planning on watching a feature length movie for review, but going to see Blur at Wembley yesterday (at the time of writing) has zapped me of my energy. Due to that I decided to review a short horror, the Alex Magaña written and directed Serbian Dancing Lady being the first result I saw on YouTube. At just over two minutes long, this didn't have time to really innovate, but it had a couple of effective moments.
A young woman (Yaret Lora) is at a deserted mall when she notices the tannoy music abruptly changing to a strange sounding Serbian tune. She is then amused to see a woman (Cat Hamm) dancing to this music, and gets her phone out to film this oddity. Once the music cuts out however, the horror begins.
I really liked the start of this short, and I also thought the ending, while highly predictable, also wasn't bad. It was the middle part where this fell down a bit for me. The woman dancing, with her back to the camera was a bit creepy, as was the Smile type grinning face the woman pulls when she turns her face to the young girl. There was a definite supernatural feel to the woman, which makes the middle part more jarring. This middle section takes the form of a small chase sequence, in which the dancing woman pursues the other person while holding a knife raised high, echoing Norman Bates from Psycho. It inadvertently looked funny rather than creepy though, which the non-supernatural heavy footsteps also added to. Then there was a clumsy transition from the chase to the young woman arriving at her apartment for a traditional end.
There is a certain formula that short horror films often struggle to escape from, and Serbian Dancing Lady is one such example of that happening. What saves this from being forgettable is the strong opening that has genuine creepiness to it, and a perfectly fine finish. At under three minutes in length this is certainly worth a watch. Being based on an actual Serbian urban legend was a nice touch (something which had been doing the rounds on TikTok).
SCORE:
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