May 14, 2022, Short 19

Boy, this was a tale of two halves.

Savannah (Sabrina Twyla) is putting up with her brother Jim (Danny Roy) while she waited for her father (Jim Marshall) to come home. When she happened to look out the window, she saw a strange hooded figure standing in her yard staring at her. Her father called and she told him about it and he began to panic, telling her to “Don’t look away.”

Jim came into the room and also started looking at the man. Savannah went to lock up but when she got back, she could not see the man any more despite Jim claiming that it was still there. Suddenly, the man was standing directly behind Savannah.

Okay, so this was where this short horror film had me. I was invested in the story, simple as it was, and I was curious what this man was. It looked creepy as heck so it was doing a great job of building my tension.

Then things derailed quickly. She tried to cover its face with tape. It tried to tear out her eyes and Jim had to help pull it off her. Oh, and by the way, in the room, the thing just stood there and did not attack her until she turned her back to call her dad. WHY WOULD SHE TURN HER BACK? I yelled that at the screen. It was the stupidest thing to do. Then the father returned and got rid of it easy-peasy.

However, the acting from this point on, especially from the father, was so wooden and difficult to believe, it really took me out of the film. I hated the way the last half of this short was written and how it was executed. It took a situation that I was engaged in and made it into a ridiculous one that I was rolling my eyes at.

Not sure how to rate this because I was really enjoying this at the start, but it just went completely into the ground. I guess…