Sunday 31 May 2020

Shadow (2020) - Short Horror Film Review


Shadow is a short horror film that was designed as a proof of concept. It was directed/produced by Benjamin Howdeshell and premiered on Crypt TV's YouTube channel on 15th May. I did like the look of the film, but it falls into the very familiar pitfall of short horrors with a predictable jump scare ending.

The synopsis of the film gives far more detail than the actual film itself provides, so I will ignore the synopsis and just go by what I could tell. Late at night a mother (Valeska Miller) hears strange noises in her house. Assuming it is her child (Nathaniel Howdeshell) she goes to investigate. Her journey leads her into the basement where things really start to go wrong...

There was good use of light and shadow here, though it was questionable why the mother would use a torch to explore her house. Maybe it would have benefited by a brief shot of her finding out the house had had a power cut. The video alleges to be based on true events, but no idea what aspect of this was meant to have happened. This felt like the proof of concept it set out to be, rather than feel like a self contained film. Still, as a whole it really wasn't that bad, I would be interested to see how this would be handled in a longer medium. My only proper complaint here is the tired jump scare ending, by now it is more of a shock if short horrors don't end on that tired trope.

While Shadow didn't have much in the way of fear I did like how it was all put together, some decent directing here. It also introduced me to the Crypt TV YouTube channel, so I have subscribed to that now. The film is free to watch there, and at under 4 minutes long it is something everyone should spare some time for.

SCORE:



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