by joe x young Noche Buena (Night Life) Third place finalist: ‘Lestat Horror’. Official selection: ‘15 second horror film challenge’. What sort of horror film can you make in 15 seconds? The answer appears to be one with a lot of gore, no real story and pretty much no point in making it if you’re going to cut the end off to fit the 15-second allowance. Noche Buena plays as if someone removed the gory bits from a low-budget horror and randomly cobbled them together. If you feel inclined to spare 15 seconds to check it out be my guest, but I am left wondering who the judges are if stuff such as this gets awards. Spectres. This one is a little longer at three minutes and with something actually resembling a story. A junkie shoots up; he dies and is teased by laughing people with poorly applied face paints on. That’s all you get folks, just under three minutes of that. I understand the desire for Independent Filmmaking, and even applaud the general concept as well as many an achievement created on a shoestring budget, but the result here is something that really could have been so much better if more time had been spent on things such as writing a better plot and even watching a few makeup effects tutorials on YouTube. I think if Phobophobia productions want to make it bigger they really should concentrate on making things more effective visually rather than relying on maniacal laughs and screams. Wedlocked. No, I’m sorry, I can’t do this anymore. Wedlocked has a bad storyline, even worse acting, and a feeble attempt at a ‘gross-out’. Everything wrong about amateur filmmaking is right here on display. We were sent a bundle of three short films and a Web series link, the reviews for Wedlock and the series are not happening, not here and now, not from me. If they send us more, I for one will not be reviewing them as my time is too precious to waste it on stuff like this. Maybe someone else on the team might like a crack at it, but as I am the ‘degenerate in residence’ for the Ginger Nuts of Horror, all I can say is that if I don’t like it there’s not much hope of the others taking a butcher’s. As far as amateur filmmaking goes I’m all in favour of it, but it appears these days as if anyone with access to a camera believes they can be the next Ted Raimi. I’ve seen countless short films of varying quality, but rarely as bad as these ones. I would highly recommend that anyone wishing to submit short films, webisodes et cetera to the Gingernuts of Horror should watch episodes of ‘The Witching Season’ or ‘Hillbilly Horror Show’ as doing that will give them some kind of insight as to how to do the job properly. Oh, and in case you’re thinking ‘We just don’t have the budget to turn out quality stuff’, take a leaf out of Dan Rickard’s book, he made a full-length zombie feature film called Darkest Day with some of the best special effects I’ve seen in an Indie movie. His budget was less than $1,000, but he spent years of weekends working on it and honing his skills. THAT dedication and patience pays off, especially as I’m still telling people about it three years after reviewing it. Anyway, if you want to watch any Phobophobia productions you’ll find them on YouTube, fill your boots, who knows, you might enjoy them.  BOOK REVIEW: CROSS HER HEART BY SARAH PINBOROUGH |
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