Triple Feature Horror
House Call
(My Little Rascal Productions; 2018)
[Director: Daniel Brown; Written by: Joseph Sorrentino]
The horror-comedy can be a difficult tightrope act, especially when stretched to feature length (fatigue often sets in even with the best of this subgenre), which is why Joseph Sorrentino’s to-the-point script helps
House Call hit with the impact of a sick punchline that never has enough time to wear itself out. In what is essentially a
Johnny the Homicidal Maniac story (remember the census taker?) applied to a live-action universe, a delusional and deranged suburbanite known only as The Doctor (Barry Tangert) lulls unsuspecting people into his basement lair, where he commiserates with a plastic, light-up snowman before embarking on his unauthorized surgeries. Sorrentino and director Daniel Brown are less concerned with justice being served than the presentation of a world where events like these are more commonplace than we might imagine. And while The Doctor is a darkly funny figure, the moral imperative that drives his actions is an apt corollary to a society that’s grown sick in the head, and is unconcerned with seeking permission for any of its warped actions. But the subtext isn’t required to enjoy the film – producer Lisa Sorrentino also created the practical effects, which are gooey and unflinching.
Scrambled
(Time to Back Out Productions; 2018)
[Written and directed by Kyle Schiffert]
Clare (Allison Morales) is a young woman placed within a nightmarish scenario: pursued through a forest by hostile characters in gasmasks and hazmat suits (an echo of George Romero’s
The Crazies), as well as her own amplified internal monologue, she attempts to find an escape.
At just under 14 minutes,
Scrambled is best taken as a technical exercise in low-budget ingenuity. The film is filled with interesting visual tricks (a nauseated green sheen hangs over the image; the menacing hazmat people have a surreal ‘ghosting’ effect to their movements) and a near-relentless echo of Clare’s thoughts, which punctuate, fade, and overlap to the point of incoherence.
At its heart,
Scrambled is a Poe-like tale of a haunted conscience coupled with a sense of disorientation and the random. The free-association method of storytelling makes for a largely unpredictable effort that also incorporates elements of sci-fi and horror. Despite its brief run time, it delivers enough strangeness and food for thought to be endearing.
Trapped in Amber
(Wide Eyed Pictures; 2017)
[Director: Daniel Brown; Written by: Brown and Lauren Ciurley]
An introverted, nameless Barber (Jeffrey Turboff) – haunted by a transgression from his distant past – finds himself approached by a precocious pre-teenager named Hazel (Caroline Oktavec), who becomes insistent on being his friend, while also seeming to possess inexplicable insight into his history.
The method to the Barber’s inner torment is a collection of behind-closed-doors vignettes and uncomfortable character interactions.
Trapped in Amber highlights the “helicopter parent” phenomenon while also possessing a dubious empathy toward a protagonist who isn’t necessarily likeable, and could, potentially, be a monster (figuratively speaking).
Clocking in at just under 30 minutes,
Trapped sets up a lot of dominoes, but avoids definitive answers, leaving the viewer to wonder about the ultimate meaning of its final images. While the performances aren’t uniformly consistent, the Barber and Hazel make for a compelling and mysterious pair, with Oktavec providing a mature, extroverted counterpoint to Turboff’s muted repression (I was reminded, rather randomly, of Angourie Rice’s interplay with Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling in
The Nice Guys). Here’s hoping for a feature-length extension – but not a resolution
per se– of these intriguing plot threads sometime in the future.
The Plot Sickens: Check out Jonny Numb’s review of
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Crash Analysis Support Team
Jonny Numb
Jonny Numb (aka Jonathan Weidler) is far from a social-media celebrity, but his mom thinks he’s cool. His morally questionable tactics for gaining attention can be found on full display on
Twitter and
Letterboxd @JonnyNumb. He also co-hosts THE LAST KNOCK podcast with Billy Crash.
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