31 Scary Movie Mini Reviews – Part 2

Posted by sean

This October, to celebrate Halloween, I’m writing 31 mini reviews of scary movies. Here are the final 16:

Scary Movie Mini Review #16: The Midnight Hour (1985)
Directed by Jack Bender

This 80s made-for-TV movie is a bit of everything: part Stephen King small town horror, part creature feature, part teen comedy, part… musical? Seeing LeVar Burton dance the Get Dead dance has to be seen to be believed. An ancient curse comes back to haunt a small New England town. Our teen heroes accidentally trigger this curse then have to resolve it on Halloween night, all while throwing a wild Halloween house party and dealing with an increasing hoard of zombies, vampires and ghosts. This is all way more fun than scary, think a Halloween version of  the original Jumanji, and the 80s styles and zany makeup and costumes alone make it worth sitting through some of the more boring sections. The gravestones are made of flimsy wood, the wolf man looks more like a thin guy in an ape suit, the filmmakers can’t decide if the movie is set in the 80s or 50s—a good chunk of the movie is just pretending to be American Graffiti—but it’s still a lot of fun to watch and an endearing Halloween treat.

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BLACK CAT HALLOWMAS – My Sophomore Effort Finally Finished

Posted by sean

After graduating film school in 2010 I spent a couple years trying to figure out what was next. In that time I worked in retail and spent long hours on walks and in libraries, mulling over and writing out ideas for short films. BLACK CAT HALLOWMAS was the first really strong idea I landed on, and in the Fall of 2012 my friend Jeremy drove up from Ohio for a long weekend of shooting.

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Hequet: Horror in a Silent Film Style

Posted by sean

Hequet is the fourth episode in my web miniseries Summer Stories, and my latest attempt at telling a story with images and sounds only. With this silent style of filmmaking, strong composition, music cues and actor’s movement and facial expressions are key to telling the story. This style of film storytelling has always appealed to me because it places so much emphasis on the cinematography and forces the viewer to engage with the story in a creative way–they have to piece the story together themselves rather than it being handed to them on an exposition platter. I’ve always enjoyed mystery in stories, leaving some of the big questions unanswered, and Hequet is no exception. What happened to the man’s wife? Is the statue really a supernatural entity or just in the man’s head? Who is the mysterious masked woman? Well, that question at least can be answered by watching Summer Stories Episode 3.

I hope you enjoy Hequet, and maybe even get a little spooked in the process! It was certainly a joy to create.

Sword and Suburb: My Newest Loner Narrative

Posted by sean

Loners have always fascinated me. Being a part-time loner myself, I’m compelled by the narrative force of a character who is alone by choice or necessity, striving to accomplish a goal by their single strength or choosing to do nothing and fade into obscurity. There is both a flaw and a strength to the loner. On one hand their absence from others shows their selfishness and fear, but on the other it shows their discipline and focus. Loners are more likely to become delusional and do foolish things because they have no one to correct them, but they’re also able to take risks that others wouldn’t take.

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