Penny Dreadful
SFX's high priestess of horror
This issue I’m celebrating all things that are short – and also Lavalantulas, which aren’t SHORT CUTS
There are some seriously good lockdown horror shorts out there. For starters, check out
Dark Mode (bit.ly/shortdark) by Brit filmmaker Jamie Hooper, whose feature debut The
Creeping is currently in post. Massively tense, it has a very similar vibe to David F Sandberg’s Lights Out, which went on to spawn a feature version.
Not Alone In Conveniently enough, Sandberg Here: might has also released a new be a clue in lockdown short: Not Alone In the title.
Here (bit.ly/shortalone), starring Lotta Losten as a woman home alone who has the strong sense there’s someone or something in the house – people being at home with an entity is unsurprisingly the theme of many lockdown films. You can also watch a very good Making Of (bit.ly/ shortmaking) which might inspire you to make your own.
DARKNESS AND LIGHT
New in home ent for June: two movies which both clock in under 90 minutes. Luz is an experimental German horror which centres on a demonic possession and a young woman recalling her past in a reenactment which becomes increasingly real. This one won plaudits on the festival circuit, and is very stylish and original – though it may test your tolerance for wankiness. It is, however, only 70 minutes long. On the lighter end of the scale is talky comedy-monster-romance After Midnight, co-starring Justin Benson of the Benson and Moorhead team who made Spring and The
Endless. Jeremy Gardner writes, co-directs and stars in this movie about a man who’s tormented by a creature in the night while his girlfriend (Brea Grant) is away. It’s 83 minutes, and could be shorter, but worth a watch. SFX's high priestess of horror
DEAD TIME STORIES
Short story time! Here are some more recommendations for fab free fiction. I utterly love “Cavity” by Theresa Delucci (bit.ly/ storycavity) – forcefully feminist, it’s about the 36 murderers that estimates say the average person meets in a lifetime. For a very different flavour try “Intertropical
Convergence Zone” by Nadia Bulkin (bit.ly/storyconverge), a gorgeously written Indonesianset fable with a punch-in-theheart ending. Then why not go for a classic like “Afterward”, by Edith Wharton (bit.ly/ storyafter); first published in 1910, it’s a clever literary ghost story about a couple who buy a house believing it to be haunted. A little shout out too to reader Bob Johnston, who sent me his wonderful body-horror short “Golden Hands”, and Tracy Johnson who sent her eerie, gothic transformation tale “Drag” – neither is published online yet, so I can’t share them with you, but I have my fingers crossed for both.
SPIDER NONSENSE
Guys, guys, Lavalantula is on Amazon Prime! I’m not going to lie: I haven’t seen it and I’m probably not going to. I didn’t even know there was such a thing as a Lavalantula until it popped up, and I certainly didn’t know what one was (it’s a lava-breathing tarantula, obvs!). Nor was I aware that the film stars Police Academy’s Steve Guttenberg as a former A-lister tasked with saving LA from a swarm of lava-breathing tarantulas unleashed by a volcanic eruption. (Can you breathe lava?) I also had no clue that there’s a sequel called 2 Lava 2 Lantula (round of applause), or that it technically exists within the Sharknado universe. Use this knowledge as you will.