.png)
Directed by Markisha Fernando and Meosha Bean
Starring Kenneth Dean Tran, Markisha Fernando
Short Film Review by Rachel Pullen
Do you ever meet a person who says ‘’I don’t really like cake’’ or ‘’Theme parks are kinda boring’’, and in that moment you realise that you will never relate, let alone be able to form any kind of relationship with that person, be it social or even on a business level?...Well that’s how I feel when people tell me they don’t like horror films.
So it’s easy to tell that I really like horror, and in my many years of film viewing I have seen a lot and I mean a lot of horror films, but because it takes a lot to really make me scared, there exists, like most genres of films, a formula and once you get to know its pattern most movies can become predictable.
Halloween Shorts: Tales of your Childhood Nightmare Stories is already like other horror films out there, like Trick 'r Treat or The ABC’s of Death, Halloween Shorts is broken into several short stories, but they all have one common factor...a mysterious black figure.
Like some kind of pervert Peeping Tom, this shadowy figure finds its way into people’s lives, causing trouble wherever it goes, but like all good horror screenwriters should know, it’s the fear of what we don’t see that is truly terrifying and that is something that this short piece certainly uses to its advantage.
Most of the stories are focused around one character and each of the actors prove that they are able to hold the audience's attention through scenes which have little to no dialogue, and although this speaks for the abilities of the actors, it also makes for a rather confusing story.
As an audience we are treated to very little in the way of explanation, there does not seem to be one particular reason why the shadowy figure appears in people's live, there is no running connection in that regard between the stories and so it can become a little confusing, but on the other end of the spectrum does the fear aspect come from the fact that there is no reason for our peeping Tom to show up on the doorstep for a little spooky fun?
Halloween Shorts are aesthetically interesting with a great soundtrack, and for all that it lacks in regards to an explanation of the storyline, it makes up for with some great jump scares and building tension.
Directors Markisha Fernando and Meosha Bean have the foundations in place to create a great horror, let’s just hope next time they can erect the whole house.
.png)
