Episode 72: YouTube Horror Short Films

to nobodies the horror content podcast where we clean up the ugly things so you don't have to our bi-weekly show features two hosts and rotating guest content experts Tackling the nitty-gritty complex horror topics with the hope of making the genre more approachable for frequent flyers and newbies alike.

The goal of this show is to highlight diverse voices and perspectives in horror. This is your reminder that there may be discourse on this show that will challenge the way you look at the genre. So let's get ready to get ugly. I'm the ghost with the blog, Lonely, and I'm joined by my co-host and partner in crime. I am Susie, a.k.a. ProjectileVarmint.

And last time we recorded, Susie, you shared your weekend plans with me, which was to join a coven. But I have some weekend plans to share with you. So do you want to guess what I'll be doing this Sunday? All right. I get three yeses. Okay. You're going to move. You're moving to a new place. You bought a house. No, but I wish. You are going to Nepal. No.

One more guess. Alright, should I shoot a little lower? Yes. Shoot lower. You are playing in a pool tournament. Not that low. So, I'm going to my first ever rage room. Oh, no, I have not done a rage room, but I think you're going to, I don't know. Are you going to take out like rage rage? Are you just going to like gingerly drop things? So I'm going with Abby. Listeners, you remember Abby, my affectionately called normie friend.

Abby, bless her. She's never had a bad thing happen to her in her life, which is amazing. I love that for her and I want that to continue. But I don't know if the trauma is going to leak out and she's going to be like, oh. Oh, God, it's gonna be like a horror film in the making. We get to pick our own playlist. And I because I'm so giving and generous, I let Abby pick 15 minutes of the 30 minute playlist and.

Let's just say we have two very different vibes, but we're going to be smashing stuff regardless. So I'll keep you posted. Listeners, keep an eye on the Instagram. By this time this goes up, you'll probably already see my smashing. That's going to be my...

episode my my personal episode of rage is gonna be the rage room but there's no rage tonight hopefully there wasn't any rage the last time this guest appeared but who knows this is his fifth guest spot So maybe, maybe tonight's the time where things get crazy, crazier again.

for the fifth time on nobodies is one of our favorite weirdos from the internet dwelling in richmond virginia this master of the obscure and outer horror limits has been posting horror film reviews on instagram since 2020 and hosting Halloween Babies podcast since 2023. He is a multi-instrumentalist and enjoys filming and scoring short horror films on his YouTube channel for Halloween Babies.

One of our most featured and highly rated guest content experts on Nobodies. Welcome back, Billy Dee. Hello, ladies, and hello, Internet. It has been a while. It was my idea to invite you back. Remember? I was like, we got to get him back for the horror shorts. So yeah, let's get to it. Where's the monkey? Oh, hold on, monkey, monkey, monkey. Oh, there he is. Right there. Down, down. Okay.

Is it any familial connection to the monkey from Oz Perkins movie? Are we all going to die from your monkey? Yes, he's a manifestation of my childhood trauma. So yes, it's... But he's nice. All right. We're starting off strong. Real strong. We're not even in the films yet. So Susie, what are we talking about tonight?

Alright, well after many requests from all of you, tonight we are beginning our first dive into horror short films, but this episode has a twist. This episode is going to feature a set of films that can all be found for free on YouTube from independent creators.

So after we're done reviewing, you can go watch him or pause right now, go watch him and come back. So unpacking short films is huge undertaking since there are not a lot of guidelines for what separates a short film from a feature length film. but the Academy defines a short film as an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credit. The amount or quality of acting, music, or effects does not matter.

As you'll see tonight, short films are seen as a way for filmmakers, especially new or independent artists to showcase their talent, almost like handing someone a resume or a business card. So a lot of times you might see some short films and then they're. later made into feature full-length movies. In horror, short-form content has always been a crowd favorite. Iconic horror writers like Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King all built their careers off producing short stories.

collections. Horror short films are especially popular in the internet age as the storytelling style relies on narrative or visual effects to unsettle an audience quickly which often leads to content that goes viral. As Susie mentioned, many horror blockbusters that we are familiar with are actually inspired by or based on shorter form content, whether it was a short story or a short film.

Here are some examples of some films that were first made as shorts then reproduced as blockbusters and again this is at no way an exhaustive list. There's a lot of actually really prominent franchises that fit this bill, but here are just a couple examples. So When a Stranger Calls from 1979 was based on the 1977 short film.

the sitter and the short film the sitter was based on a santa monica newspaper article about a babysitter receiving threatening phone calls just like in the movie Trick or Treat from 2007 is based on a 1997 short film, animated short film, also called Trick or Treat Season's Greetings, both directed by Michael Dougherty. mama from 2013 is based on the 2008 del toro short film of the same name as you know del toro collaborated on the the full future length film of mama on on the monster redesign

Oculus, one of Susie's favorites from 2013, is based on Mike Flanagan's 2005 short film, Oculus Chapter 3, The Man with a Plan. Have you ever seen the short, Susie? I have not. No, but now I want to. Yeah, especially because you also like his earlier stuff, as we've seen from that other film with the bug in the tunnel. I can't even remember the name of it.

The Terrifier franchise and the character of Art the Clown began with two short films, one being The Ninth Circle and the other being All Hallows' Eve, which are technically anthologies. I don't know if this really counts, but... Arthur Clown was in a shorter form content before he became super famous. And then Smile from 2022 is based on the 2020 short film, Laura Hasn't Slept. And what's cool about this short film is that Smile actually is a direct continuation.

of that short film. So the story of Smile picks up exactly where Laura hasn't slept, has left off. So in the first 10 minutes, we're reintroduced to this character. And both of those pieces were directed by Parker Finn. That's so cool. I didn't know that. uh short on that either and i can only imagine what that is knowing

Knowing what Smile has become, I can only imagine what that short is like. But I think it's easy to see the impact that this short form content has had on the genre over time. But I can't say that I've always had, you know, an inkling to watch short films.

And what do we see as the pros and cons of producing short form content versus long form content? So, Billy, you want to get us started? What is your experience with short film and pros and cons? So I like to call them little horror hitters. Just a quick little hit of some horror. And I went through a phase where that was like my nighttime routine. um in bed with an ipad and just you know you know looking you know best horror shorts of 2018 best horror shorts of 2020.

And I like to view them as like calling cards or a proof of concept, a chance for someone to kind of show what they've got. And, you know, of course, being short, they usually bypass the three act structure. And a lot of them seem to be presented as if they're an intro to a feature. You know, the very beginning, you get that that initial kill. And then it's like, boom, now we're going to jump into the meat of the film. But we don't do that.

As I've gotten older, I kind of prefer them more delivered via anthologies so I can kind of sit down with them and really get into them. Because when you kind of watch them on their own and... Over time, the downside of them is they can be easily forgettable. They really need to stand out. But yeah, I'm pretty excited. I've enjoyed a lot of these that we had going on and I'm interested to hear what you ladies thought of them.

So Susie, you're the short film aficionado. So what do you see as the pros and cons? I'm also very short in stature, vertically challenged, but regardless. I have a strange relationship with horror shorts because... when i like something i don't want it to end i think that's human nature so i always am a little hesitant to go into watching short films because i know that they're going to be short and if i like it it's going to be over i like to invest my time into things

But I will watch any short film that is recommended to me because, like Billy said, I just want that quick hit of horror. And these horror shorts we have coming up tonight, I feel like they were all scary in their own way. And I can't wait to talk about them. them lonely you are not a horror short lover though correct i don't know if i would say i'm not a horror short lover i just think i'm not particularly drawn to them

I'm also not particularly drawn to short stories either. Like, I think my relationship with short stories began and ended with scary stories to tell in the dark when I was a child. That's about as far as I got. But, you know, I don't know. I just I remember like having an Edgar Allan Poe phase as a teenager and like reading those short stories. But I don't know. I was never particularly drawn to them. I think in terms of short films.

I'm less impressed with them overall. I feel a lot of them give... It's like giving film students. It feels like... Film student final exam submission for a lot of these. And I know that sounds so terrible because a lot of these are like independent, you know, created features. And, you know, I can never do something like this. I don't have that kind of talent. But overall, I think I'm just very hard to impress when it comes to.

to some of these a lot of these on this list i have seen in the past and i actually re-watched for this recording and i remember liking them and I was surprised by how my feelings had changed about some of them. So I don't know. I'm really on the fence. Maybe you both will be able to convince me, but I mean, in terms of pros and cons, I think, you know,

Short films are also a really good entry point for a lot of people. You know, if you don't find yourself drawn to horror, it could really give you a chance to, you know, try it out. It's like a sampler, a little appetizer. And then decide if, you know, you can commit to a whole thing.

And, you know, if you struggle getting a concise story down on a short film, that's probably an indication that you're not ready for a little feature-like film either. And I wish some of our pals over at A24 had learned that lesson before creating larger films.

such as life thank you thank you for that shade in these hot summer months lonely oh i live to serve I would also say like an upside to them is if you're a young budding director or storyteller, they can be inspiring because for me, I know when it's when I'm trying to create things. Viewing such a giant monolithic thing is like a film and how you get that done seems impossible.

But if you can break it down into just a few shots, a few scenes that you can edit together, I think it kind of gives hope to those young filmmakers. Wow. Tonight, we're going to be doing micro-reviews of 12 short films from the last decade. And as a reminder, all of these are available to watch for free on YouTube. So be sure to check them out as we are going to be doing full spoilers on all of these reviews.

And we're going to start out with Lights Out from 2013. This is three minutes long. And did this inspire the movie Lights Out? Because it seems very similar. I'm going to assume it did. So we left that out of your initial list. But this is a Swedish supernatural horror short directed by David Sandberg and stars his wife as the primary character. This short would later be...

reproduced as Sandberg's feature-length directorial debut of the same name, Lights Out from 2016. I should have read the show notes. Lights Out from 2013 follows a woman returning home on a dark and rainy night to find something in her home.

that is a mess and just like the feature-length film this this is scary anything that has to do with the dark and showing things moving towards the camera slowly but you know it's eventually going to get to the point where it's right in your face terrifies me so much I think there's like one scene in The Messengers from like way long ago that had that really slow moving horror. And that gets me each time. This got me. What about you guys?

For me, this is like one of the most memorable and effective YouTube shorts. And it's stuck with me for like 10 years easily. If you haven't seen it, there's a woman who's going into her bedroom.

and is turning off the lights in the hallway and every time she turns off the lights she sees a figure standing at the end of the hallway so she keeps turning it on and off and then finally uh on the third or fourth time the the the figure is like standing almost right in front of her and she you know obviously freaked out tapes the light switch on and jumps into bed And then you get some hallway noise, lights going on and off. She's got the light in the bedroom on. It's flickering. So she.

pulls the covers back just enough to make sure the plug to the light is secure. And then we get a quick flash of this horrific. creature just smiling this stretched out smile sitting right next to her and that image like every any night that i have to get up and like go to the bathroom or anything i always like just picture that and uh yeah that's it's it's so effective

we're living the same life billy because this has been my experience with this film as well so i mentioned on the show before that i'm afraid of the dark and there was a period of my life where i wasn't i was a little kid i slept with a nightlight and then i was free of my fear of the dark and then i watched this short film on somebody's cell phone in study hall as a freshman in high school and

No, I did not speak it out loud because, you know, I was deeply, I was real edgy at the time, so I didn't emote. You didn't ruin your image. Yeah, I couldn't ruin my image, of course not. But... I sure still sleep with the lights on to this day. Like, literally.

four years living like on campus in college slept with the lights on every freaking night i still sleep with the lights on the only time i don't sleep with the lights on is when my husband is physically in the room with me and it is because of this film exactly what you said billy like every

possible time in the dark that you could imagine this face I imagined that face so when I had tasked myself with re-watching this film for this episode I didn't know I didn't know if I was going to make it through I kept pausing it. I kept, I was like, I'll just fast forward it. I just won't watch it. I know what happens. I don't need to rewatch it for the episode. But folks, I did. I did rewatch it. And dare I say.

as is the nature of most things like this the face was not as scary as i remember it it really wasn't that was like the reveal kind of like the reveal was like on the second yeah the second time around i would feel like the reveal wasn't as strong but i still think it's a strong short i think it's one of those where you want to show everyone else like you want everyone to watch this you get their reaction

And I know Lights Out as a feature-length film was really campy. And I wouldn't say it's the strongest horror film ever made. But I still thought it was clever and somewhat cute for what it did. It's certainly not well acted. I mean, it's acceptable PG-13 horror. It's got Teresa Palmer. I love Teresa Palmer. She can't stop having babies. But yeah, very, very freaky. She's pregnant with her fifth or sixth right now. So she just loves making little blonde kids.

i noticed on youtube there's there's at least two versions of this one with like a adjusted audio um that might be the one to to check out it would have been great if they could have somehow done something to just spruce that face up a little bit more. Cause I agree with you, you know, after watching it now, like at night when it pops into my head, it's way more scarier than it is, than it is on the, on the short, but yeah, still super effective. And I,

I think we're going to see similarities to a lot of these shorts as we go along towards this. So up next, we have something a little bit different, very different from what we just discussed, and that is...

my house walkthrough 2016 this is a 12 minute short this is a japanese youtube video created by i really tried to find the the creator's like real name not their you know posting name but i couldn't find anything else they either go by piro pito or nana 8276 3 but this I wish I had their real name. But wherever you are, we're talking about your film. The description claims in the YouTube description that this is not a horror video.

It literally says, quote, this is not a horror video. The video was created simply by filming the inside of my house. Close quote. Naturally, if you read that description and then watch this.

you can understand why this horrified audience who stumbled upon it you know when it first came out but then four months later the creator actually uploaded a behind the scenes video where they actually show them creating the set and creating some of the you know the features will say right now that you know reveal that it was in fact a horror video

So I think that's a funny little fact there. My house walk through 2016 actually takes the viewer on a house tour in Japan during a typhoon, but this is not an ordinary house. So I actually sent... billy a picture of my handwritten notes when i was watching this and the last line literally my last two notes say grandmother is here close quotes oh fuck oh fuck oh my god

I liked this film a lot. I thought it was really fucking wild. And Billy, I think you liked this one too. So do you want to talk a little bit about what kind of happens in the beginning of this film? Yeah. So first off, the production design on this is just great. um you're you're walking through a house and specifically this hallway that they keep describing as the longest hallway and everything kind of like folds back in on itself so he's walking down the hall and

Each room, it's that Japanese style where it's like the rice paper walls. And he'll point to a room and be like, you know, this is grandmother's room.

you know grandfather locked this room this is uh the doll room you know my father locked this doll room and he's showing you pictures on this is a picture on the wall from world war ii and then he opens a door and then it's like we're back to the beginning so it keeps on you know groundhog day going back and keep going and as it goes along things slowly start to change

And by the end of it, he's going faster through the house and everything in the house seems draped in this like blood soaked gauze. And. You go through one room and he's like, this is grandmother. And then you see a form of a body on the bed wrapped in the gauze. He goes into the bathroom. Here's grandfather. He's in a bloody tub and blood splattered all over the place.

and then he goes into his room and there he is dead and um yeah there's all these weird he keeps repeating himself but then he slowly mixes in different things like at one point he says this room has no taste like what the fuck and and to me it was like this like death and decay via the memory of a ghost and uh I had the phrase, I couldn't stop thinking hell is where the home is. So that interpretation is actually what a lot of people say is that it.

it's it's a ghost like in the way that a lot of times when we learn about ghosts we hear that you know they repeat the same path like there's different types of ghosts and one of them is like a residual haunting where they just go in a loop wherever they died so but susie what did you think about this one Well, first, I want to touch on that red fabric that's draped over everything. It's slowly, like, building up as this man is walking through the house. And I was like, hmm.

japan what does red fabric represent so i googled it and it's weird because it actually like symbolizes protection good fortune and it has a spiritual significance it's used in like weddings and happy occasions and in this sure it was used like for the complete opposite so i'm just curious if that had meaning or anything but for me this one like anytime you were stuck in like just a repetitive endless loop where things are happening over and over again but they're just like

different each time that evokes like the biggest sense of dread for me I don't know what it is but it's almost like this descent into madness and you're going crazy one time I went to this haunted house with my friends and like you go through the entire haunted house and they're like showing you the exit and you go out the exit, but it's actually like the beginning of the haunted house again. And you go through the whole haunted house again.

And like, by the end, you're like, oh my God, am I going to be stuck in this endless loop? And like, that is what this, this short made me feel this, this hit, this had a big impact. Right. And I, when I was texting with lonely, like. Within the, you know, it's what, like a 12 minute video. Yeah. You know, halfway through, I'm like, man, is this is it just going to keep going and then something's going to jump out at me? And I would have been really pissed off. I was like, come on.

but this like just took the idea and just you know when you're not expecting it to do what it does and um yeah i love this one and um there's There's noises in the background of like a radio and he keeps saying, is he saying my grandfather likes to listen to sutras, which are short sayings that require interpretations.

So usually what I, this is usually the time where we talk about a weird film and I go, Oh, Billy would like this film, but you're here in the room with us. So at this point, I'm going to say Mike, AKA that horror teacher. needs to watch this and the reason being is this gives major j horror vibes like really hard-hitting like oh 100 jay horror like video game vibes like this would make a stellar video game like gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous so

Mike, the only other person in the horror community that enjoys video games as much as I do, Mike needs to watch this ASAP. A couple little things that I noticed that we didn't mention and then we'll move on. Did either of you notice the black hair?

coming out of the wall yeah yep and i was thinking grudge grudge yeah i was like not the hair oh my god i'm literally sitting in the i'm recording in our sunroom in the dark and i'm like freaking out right now i'm like And we forgot to mention this whole thing is shot with like the point of view of you are walking through the house.

like the found footage aspect of it so i thought that was really cool whenever you do that in any kind of media i'm always like all in and i feel like i'm there experiencing it

All right, so we're going to move on to the next one, which is The Pretty Thing from 2018. This is five minutes. It was directed by Dylan Clark, and it follows the events after the back door in a girl's room won't lock at night. And I think out of all of the shorts we're going to talk about, this one seemed the most like lower budget and more simple in theory. So you have this girl and she's kind of like in a cabin. Maybe there.

in like a rustic area and her sisters across the hall and she's just laying in her bed and it seems like something that could have been shot on like a vhs camera or something and she's looking out her window there's like a screen there's a sheer curtain over and she can see like a face on the other side and she gets like really creeped out by it so she's texting her sister and her sister's in the other room saying no it's okay like you can just come in my room and

Her response is kind of delayed because she's looking through this sheer fabric at this face. And then we get the reveal when she walks into the other room. Yes. So she walks.

Into the other room and the lights are out and you see you can barely see a figure standing over the bed and When she turns the lights on it's this creepy face kind of low budget but you know it's a mask standing there and it has grabbed the woman who's laying in bed by her head and twists her head and you hear a crack and that's when it ends It was kind of clever how the filming or how the camera angle showed the...

being or the person over the bed because at first i was like oh it's her sister and her sister's probably like sleepwalking or something we don't necessarily know that that's actually the pretty girl that was outside the window right It was a pretty girl outside the window? I didn't think it was a pretty girl at all. It's called the pretty thing. Oh, well, I thought the girl...

I thought it was supposed to be the creepy thing. Oh, they're the pretty thing. They're the pretty thing. Did that point of view make you think it wasn't the creature? I didn't think it was the creature. I don't know.

I don't know now. I have to turn another light on as we're talking about this. This is freaking me the fuck out. It is too late to be talking about this. Well, now that you say that, Susie, that's actually really fucking creepy. So do you think it was like two creatures or do you think it was a creature and then like...

Like, just somebody broke into the house? Like, what was it? I think it was the creature, but the way it was shot, you're in the point of view of the sister going into the other room to, like... get comfort from her sister and when we see the thing standing over the bed you can't see the sister in the bed so i thought it was a sister standing there and then the reveal is it's not the sister it's this thing killing the sister which i thought was it was creative

It was a bit of a strange one in the sense of the location to me, it seemed like they were filming this at an Airbnb. And that back room was like... you know the homeowner was like oh it's a four bedroom you know like and like no that's not a bedroom because she walks out of that room into like some when she leaves that room it's almost like she's in a old rustic like

wooden shed yeah it doesn't seem like a house right right um yeah i i felt this one was a bit derivative um i i watched it twice i liked a little bit more on my second time but um but yeah i mean you know it's i'm not sure when this was made in relation to lights out but um i could definitely see that as an inspiration for it this one and the one immediately following this i

The movie finished and I was like, okay, question mark. What were you trying to tell me? This director we will see again for another short later on in the list.

actually is significantly stronger so is there something moving behind you lonely stop stop moving on i see it too no oh my god now that you guys okay stop fucking with me i literally was like i was about to have a mental breakdown because where i have my i have a webcam cover because i never recovered from uh unfriended dark web and i was like oh my god my webcam camera is open

But obviously it's fucking open because we were recording a video earlier. Anyway, back to the agenda. The next film, I'm curious if Susie will like this one.

The Smiling Man, 2018. Six Minutes, directed by A.J. Bryonis, follows a little girl home alone that comes face to face with a pure evil. So the film starts and we have this young girl in a very poltergeist-esque situation. She is sitting in the dark, absolute dark. Also, can we just say that this...

Little girl is like very, very, very young to be home alone. Like, I don't know why. I think her mom is just like downstairs making dinner or getting groceries from the car. Sounds like you're having a snack and I'm jealous. But anyway. There's no snacks in this. It's gum. It's gum. Oh, okay. Well, so our little friend sees something from the hallway. She notices a red balloon. And when she follows the red balloon downstairs... She finds a visitor. The visitor is a...

Maybe late 30s male with some filed down teeth with a lot of white makeup. And I actually thought the makeup effects were pretty good. The guy looked pretty creepy. And he's kind of in this primordial, like... stance and the girls looking at him and has zero reaction like it's not like it's a cute little furry puppy she's looking at it like oh hi but like if i was that little and i saw something that scary i'd be screaming when kids see anybody that's not

they're like family members they scream so that just like took me right out of it there and this creepy guy ended up killing her mother and the girl's like ah and that was pretty much it for this one this was a i miss so like i said i finished this and i was like okay question mark it is it has its creepy moment there's like a singular creepy moment for me

But Billy, what did you think? So I thought the creature dude reminded me of either a young Nick Cage or Richard Brake from... like uh rob zombies 31 and it was definitely creepy creature um my note is um it takes a lot to phase this fucking kid um because she's like she's just kind of there going along with it like oh hey dude and um she the only time she gets phase is when the camera pans back and you see the mother laying like against one of the cabinets in the kitchen

I can't remember if she's like wrapped in plastic and you only see her head and she's like about to like take her last breath. And the girl is, gets a little bit shocked. And then this guy. This is kind of a cool shot. You see the blood from the mother pooling on the floor and the camera pans down to the pool of blood and you see the reflection of the mother's face in the blood. And then the creature wipes his hand in the blood.

and puts you know two dots dots over each eye and then a big smile across his mouth um and then you know goes up to a little girl and tells her you know um it seems like the intro to a film And I think this is one of the shorts that like are brought to you by like Alter, which is like a channel that. Yeah.

I think when you see something from Alter, you know it's at least going to have a decent production quality. But... But it's almost like they had... oh we have this really cool makeup and this like creepy guy but they didn't really incorporate him into the story in any way that was like cohesive because like she's following balloons to get to him and attached to each balloon are like

doll parts and it would have made sense if the creature was like a clown but it's this like weird filed down teeth guy it just like did not make it didn't seem to go together and fit for me right right i think that like it appeals to what you just said billy about how this is like the beginning of a film because if this were to be made into like a feature-length film what we'd probably learn this is my assumption is

why this thing thinks it's a clown, or maybe it used to be a clown. I also didn't interpret it as just a human. I thought it was a creature. But it seems like, Susie, you thought it was a guy. Yeah. Well, we only have six minutes of content to discuss, so many questions we'll never know the answer to. And our next one actually has... Dare I say, even more questions and no answers.

No. Well, maybe, but I enjoyed this one. It's Man on a Train from 2018, directed by Jack Shanks. It's four minutes long, and it follows a young woman who has a terrifying encounter with a mysterious man on a train. So this woman is getting onto a subway. There's not a lot of people on the subway. In fact, it's just her and this other guy and he's in another car, but she can see him down like the aisle.

And she looks over at him and she sees he looks a little strange. His eyes are kind of sunken in. He's black and you can tell she's feeling a little uneasy. And then she looks back at him and he's moved a little bit.

And then what does she do? It's almost like lights out where like you're panning the camera and going back and forth and you're in her point of view and she's seeing him. So you don't know where he is either. And all of a sudden she looks through the cracks between the scenes and he's right there. And then he's like all up in her face. This one was this one hit for me because it's a situation that was rooted in reality. And I could picture myself in that situation.

like me getting on a bus or a train or a tram and there being somebody creepy there's late at night and you can't do anything about it well i take the train regularly for my job and You know, honestly, as far as train, another subgenre we have to review at some point, train horror. As far as train horror goes, this is really not up there. The only thing that goes through my brain when I'm on a train at night is the scene from the sadness.

with the train where they're all on the subway and they start absolutely killing each other um if i saw this guy on the train I think I'd mind my own business. Maybe if she stopped looking at him so much, he wouldn't have got all up at her grill like that. This also reminds me of we reviewed something on a different episode with Billy where.

You mentioned if you blink, you miss the entire plot of what's happening. And I might have just blinked at all of the inopportune times because Susie, all I saw when I watched this was she's watching the other guy on the cell phone, like the businessman.

And then I don't know if I blinked or fucking dozed off or what, but then all of a sudden he was just like in her face, like in the window. I didn't even get the whole like buildup. I must have missed that entire piece. Billy, did you catch any of that? i did um and i would have to say um for all you um weed heads out there this is right at exactly four minutes and 20 seconds

So you can get your horror hit while you're getting your weed hit on. But I felt a bit like Susie watching this because I've heard her so many times start to watch a movie. and be like, I thought it was going this way, and that's what I wanted it to be, but it ended up being something different. So this, when she's on the train, we hear a couple different conversations, and the conversations started to kind of layer on top of each other.

And I was hoping that we were going to like have that keep building and the horror was going to be like embedded in the conversations. That's not what we got. Instead, we got Bud the Chud. And that's what I thought this guy looked like was Bud the Chud chilling on a tube and coming at this girl. And I.

That aspect of it, I didn't really like. And then even the ending, I felt like if they were going to go this route, they should have cut it a little bit earlier because as it goes to end, we're focusing on her. and we hear the sounds start to swell, almost like a raging storm outside, and she turns her head towards the window.

I felt it should have just ended there. But then we get the camera kind of cutting from the angle to where we see her looking out the window and the reflection of Bud the Chud behind her. I think I gave this like a 2.5 out of 5. It was kind of middling. Yeah, there you go. Susie was so shocked by your lackluster review, Billy, that she turned her camera on. Listeners, you weren't even here to witness the appalled nature. I want to move on from...

from the man on the train i'd like to move on now to a film that i also kind of didn't like i have to stop being such a debbie downer this episode we've got vicious 2019 this is 12 minutes Directed by Oliver Park follows a young woman coping with the recent death of her sister who comes home one night to find her front door unlocked and suspects she might not be alone in the house. So I'd like to address my quops at the start.

If you show up to your house and you know you locked the door, don't go in the house. especially not alone and not armed like what world do you think we're living in that you can just walk it like what good outcome would come of that is my first thing Why would a creature need to use a lock? Why did a creature unlock the door? Better question. So my first note is...

Yeah, why would you go inside? This is a no for me. And I also could not with any amount of certainty actually understand if her sister was dead. before or after the short film started i had a lot of trouble with this story honestly i had a lot of trouble like following what was happening and for the scare that we got at the very end i feel like this was like too much build-up of nothing You must have blinked.

when we we got the sympathy card and a picture and she's like she has sympathy flowers next to her bed and then there's a picture of her sister so you know her sister died and then you get this flashback of her sister having nightmares and she's like they're just nightmares

just nightmares and guess what they weren't nightmares it was a demon night creature attacking her sister and then it attacks her and she dies so i like took it a totally different way like i thought like her sister committed suicide that's the way i took it like and then this creature was like I don't know. I also couldn't understand if the creature killed the sister or if this creature had, like, possessed the sister or was taking the form of the sister. Maybe it's a comment. Billy?

Guide us. Yeah, I felt this was derivative and just full of tropes, like you said. I mean, the open front door, you know, the grab the knife and hello. If you're going to grab a knife, put some bass in your voice and be threatening. And by the end, it was kind of like a too little, too late kind of thing. You know, that that final shot of the weird creature person, whatever it was, you know, very reminiscent of Lights Out. And I thought.

It looked kind of good, but again, I didn't really enjoy getting there. I think, do we have any other, like...

Anything else to offer here? It's sad that this is one of the longest shorts on the list and we have so little to say about it. I think that really reflects how little... like how little actually happens which i think is interesting because some of the longer shorts that we'll see here there's a lot more like if compare this to my house walkthrough you know what i mean like there was so much that we were able to pick up on like

There were things happening in the background. There were things visually we were looking at, things we were listening to. This is literally a girl within maybe three rooms of her... stagnant house like there's nothing on the walls everything's gray the shot of the creature crawling towards the camera it does get you a little bit of a scare but by that point you know why bother

basically right and then you're and then you're gonna call it vicious you know also the title doesn't mean anything that's why i was like trying to think of oh maybe it has to do with mental health or something like like what was vicious the creature yeah freaking obviously it broke into your house and wanted to kill you question mark i don't understand i think we're digging too deep like we sometimes do well the next one there's something very deep

Maybe Endless. And it is called The Other Side of the Box from 2020. This is a 15 minute long film and I feel like it went by... Pretty quickly, it's directed by Caleb J. Phillips, and it follows a young couple who receive a mysterious package from an old friend. If there's anything on this list that I think could be made into a feature film and it could pack a punch, it'd be this one. So there's this couple and they're just having like a date night. It's the Christmas season.

friend maybe acquaintance something you sense something happened between the friend of the couple he comes by and he gives The couple, well, he gives the boyfriend a box and he's like, all right, don't read the card. Open it first, but I got to go. He leaves and then the boyfriend opens up the present and it's this box that when you look inside, it's just completely black.

and there's like no bottom to it. It's devoid of space. It doesn't follow like our rules of physics. And it turns out that there's something special about this box. Do you want to let the listeners know what that is, Billy? There's a dude in the box. Not a dick in the box. A dude in the box. A dude in the box.

and uh yeah and if if you're not looking at the box he will start to come out of the box um but for a few minutes we just get this head um stick you know looking at these two people a really creepy head too it's really creepy he's staring at you and um

After a few minutes, he starts repeating phrases that he hears in the voice of the people speaking. I guess after the phone call with his buddy and his buddy's like... or the note or whatever where he's he knows that he has to he thinks somebody has to keep looking at it but it's him that has to keep looking at it and so he leaves the house and leaves his girlfriend there and of course when he comes back shit gets weirder he can't find his girlfriend and um he goes to the basement door

And he's peering down the stairs and he calls out to her and he hears her, but we know it's not her. And then he goes down and hears some more weird things. And then as he goes to go back up, there's... a group of people standing at the top of the stairs bathed in like their silhouette and then he looks over to his side and there's the dude that was in the box standing in a room underneath a light bulb and he is pulling the switch to turn off the light and um

There was weird things going on in here. When people would go into rooms, they would go to turn on the light switches, and the light switches had been pulled out of the electrical boxes in the wall. That was very strange. This one gave me a bit of a It Follows vibe. Yes, 100%. I was thinking of it too. Almost like I'm passing something on to you and here are the rules and you've got to follow these rules.

You know, you're thinking with the intention that this guy's going to have to pass it on to somebody else. And I thought it was interesting, the idea of this is horror that demands your attention. I mean, I like this. Susie, I think you sent this to me before, and you recommended that I watch it. It is definitely probably one of the more fast-paced ones in the set.

i would disagree that i don't think it would survive as a feature-length film because what would you do for the rest of the film i feel like it is a what makes it strong is that it's a complete story from start to end as is They could get pulled into the box and we would see what that underworld looks like and he has to rescue his girlfriend and get back into the other realm. I don't know. Doesn't that become a different film? Then we're getting into the back rooms.

You're fine with me. So, we might not be. We'll never know what's on the other side of the box. But we also won't know what's on the other side of the sentient abyss.

Yes, that's right. I don't think you'd ever hear those two words in a sentence, but this next film is about a sentient abyss. It's called Curve. 2021 it is 10 minutes directed by tim egan follows a young girl clinging to the curved surface above a sentient abyss and i was watching this and i'm like oh this is definitely a susie movie um so i'm curious if you liked this one susie not a lot happens here i mean we have

Literally, the film starts and we're looking at this abyss. There's water rushing, it's windy, whatever, whatever. And there's a girl in a very twisted position, stuck to this edge of like a... Reminds me of like a skate park bowl, basically. And every time she tries to move, she falls. She risks falling into the abyss. And that's where we're at. Then it starts to rain. And she can't hold on any longer. So that's it. That's the entire 10 minutes. Did I miss something? It's depression 101.

um this girl cannot get a leg up she's like she's laying there she's got one leg folded up under her um she every time she slides She tries to push herself back up a little bit more and it slides down a little bit more. Her hands are bloody. She's trying to dry them off so that she can grab purchase and keep going. And meanwhile, she's looking across and seeing.

a similar curve that obviously someone had been there before and falling. And we're hearing screams in the distance. And we're assuming this is... just something that keeps happening and it's you know to me it's like the inability to get yourself out of a situation and uh it just keeps getting bleaker and bleaker until you're down in that hole so that was a great description of metaphorically what this could mean to me this was just kind of a short film that makes you

ask some questions like what is going on here where is this person is this like an alien thing are they in another realm a different dimension this short reminded me of cube movie from like 25 years ago and just had that same like vibe like an idea of what if this happened what if and it was short not a lot happened but it definitely had a vibe I dug it appreciate bit more you know having the different lens that you took on it billy

Susie, in terms of its comparison to Cube, I think you're right. But what made Cube successful, in my opinion, was that it leaned horror comedy. And I don't know if this would have been more successful as a horror comedy short. I actually can't even... We don't even have any horror comedy shorts on the list, so I wonder if they're any more successful at all. I had heard of... You think Cube is a horror comedy? It is totally a horror comedy. It is so camp.

no it might be can't be but i don't think there's like anything comedic about it i don't know maybe i guess well we can't review cube right now but moving moving onward Yes. No more curves. This next one, I actually think we have some substance too, but let's see. All right. This one just kind of...

really veered off in a different direction. It is Portrait of God from 2022. It is seven minutes long and it's directed by Dylan Clark. So this was the same guy who gave us the pretty thing. It follows a religious girl preparing a presentation about a painting titled Portrait of God. So we are led to believe that this girl maybe is giving a thesis. She seems like she could be a college student, maybe in the nunnery or whatever.

that's called and she has this portrait of god which is actually just like a blank screen or a blank picture of just blackness and she has researched and found that some people can actually see god in the picture and she questions like why can't i see god and as she's like practicing her thesis she looks at the picture again and then she starts seeing something and

we see deep in the distance and I thought the cinematography with the perception of depth was really cool here we see like two little beady eyes way off in the distance in the screen and slowly you see this face start forming and this creature start forming in front of you and she is embraced almost by this light that the creature has in its mouth we're led to believe maybe it's god maybe it's a demon and then the screen pans to her standing in front of the

portrait and it's been three hours have passed um this one i thought was super cool lonely i want to hear your thoughts on this because it is this religious horror short that i don't think i've ever seen anything like So this is actually the inspiration for the entire episode. So many moons ago, Billy sent me this link for this video. It's like you sent me the faces of death or something, Billy. He was very clear on what he sent me.

He wasn't like, click this link and see what happens. He was like, I saw this. I thought you might like it. And I did. And I thought this film was so fucking cool that it deserved you know, a whole episode premise. Clearly, I didn't do as good of a job picking the other films. Maybe Billy should have picked the rest of the list, but...

I thought this was really cool as hell. And this is probably because of my affinity for religious horror. This is the one that I think could have made a full feature length film. It's clearly so last time you were on the show, Billy, we talked about. tulpas and this idea of like willing something into existence and i think that's such an interesting play on what we're talking about in this short because we have a painting which is usually where like a lot of

you know, cultural conversation about Tolkien begins is this idea that like you can will a soul into a painting or like paintings can hold a soul. And we're also talking about God at the same time. So there's this idea that you could essentially

will God into existence by believing that it's there. And that's one of my favorite rhetorics when it comes to religious horror is this idea of belief in the power of belief and there's a lot of cool symbolism here um you know the three hours is very symbolic as we know three fifteen and six are all really big numbers when it comes to religious horror particularly as it relates to

Christian religious horror and I think it's a super cool I think it's simple I think it does what it needs to do and then it finishes what it's saying and then we move on one of my favorite shots of the entire The short film is the end when you can see that she has been gripping the cross, her necklace.

the entire time and the blood is like dripping down her hand and she has a white shirt on and it's just a really cool touch my qualm is that the creature or whatever it is the entity that we see it feels like a ripoff of it because in the original like writings about stephen king's it they talk about the dead lights and the fact that it the creature the entity has the lights that you know

possess people or whatever so i hope that was too much of a call instead of the eyes so maybe i thought well in pennywise's case like pennywise opens his mouth and the deadlines are in there Oh, I missed that. I forgot. And Stephen King. But there's many interpretations of it. But that's my long run about I really like this. I thought the symbolism was great. I thought it was really entertaining. Billy, I hope I didn't steal all of your talking points. Do you want me to add here?

Yeah, so, you know, I obviously really like this one. And on one of the episodes I've been on before, I mentioned how I was raised Southern Baptist, but I'm agnostic. But I remember being in a house with pictures of Jesus and they always freaked me out. And for this film, I was picking up on spiritual belief versus fear of the unknown.

and it's very strange like when faith becomes concrete and we witness our faith solidify it becomes scary because we're unprepared for that hard copy uh and you talk about how she's standing there and she's standing there and we realize she's been there for three hours and three minutes and if you look up angel number 303 it means you need to empower yourself through the things you face in life

and this is what really got me everything you encounter in life will either change you or destroy you and there's that senior she it's like the veil is removed where the screen goes up and she turns her back and the darkness consumes her. This one reminded me a lot of certain themes in Martyrs, especially... When you see her face at the end and she's holding that cross and her eyes are wide open, tears are streaming down her face, she's gripping that cross and it's bleeding.

We can only guess at what she's thinking. It's somewhere in between, you know, not really on fear anymore and not really on, like, delight. It's very eerie.

I think one thing that stands out the most about Portrait of God is that, at least in this list, the last thing we saw from this director was the pretty thing. And what... darkly different pieces of media like I never would have guessed that the same person made both of these because one I feel has a lot more like bite to it there's a lot more that you can

like sink your teeth into and talk about even if you don't like even if you don't have an affinity for religious horror i feel like there's just more to look at and more to do with portrait of god rather than the pretty thing i'm just very surprised that these both came from the same you know director he learned from the first one he had he really like focused in on one idea and he didn't need like all this fancy Anything extra. This is like bare bones. There's not a lot.

of visuals here it's a girl a screen and then there's one shot where she kind of like goes into this stage like place where there's a spotlight on her and almost reminded me of under the skin um It's just like cinematography is beautiful in this one. Agreed. Our next edition is probably one of the weakest in the bunch. We've got Mama Agnes from 2023.

It is three minutes long and directed by Alexander the Titan, and it follows a young girl home alone when her mother unexpectedly returns from her business trip early. This is three minutes. There's not a lot to talk about in terms of what is happening here. We probably have three shots of the entire piece.

basically the young girl goes into the kitchen to i don't know check the door or get water or whatever and she hears a voice behind her and it's her mother and shocker as she's talking to her mother Her phone rings and it's her mother. So who? It's like if the if your mom's on the phone and your mom's in the kitchen, who's flying the plane? No.

I think at this point in our horror reviewing careers, I am sick of doppelgangers. I am so sick of doppelganger movies. I don't understand the obsession, and I don't think this is... This scare wasn't even worth anything, but there was nothing to even look at here, in my opinion. I understand it's only three minutes, and I understand that it's independent, but I thought this was a waste. I'm sorry. Susie, thoughts? Well, there's on Instagram, like with all the reels.

So it's like scariest moments caught on video. And it's like there's this one where a girl is in a room and her mom is on the other side of the door, but it's not really her mom. And so at first I thought this was that. And I don't know, I don't think it needed to be much. This is something that, again, is rooted in reality until it's not. And it was creepy. It was short and sweet and creepy. It was effective to me. This, I don't know.

I thought it was okay, but I'm with Lonely on the whole doppelganger thing. I don't really get it. I'm not afraid of it. If I ran into my doppelganger, I'd be like, let's start a band, dude. I guess I get it if it's if you see if you like in this sense where she sees a doppelganger and then knows that it's her mother is somewhere else and it's a creepy smile, but like it didn't do much for me.

And, and I think this director has done, like he, he like seems kind of one trick pony is maybe because he, there's several of these that he's done. Yeah. I think you could probably skip this one.

here's my issue with it too so this came out so the original mama agnes came out like really recently i would say like 2023 and it blew up on social media and i'm going to go on a little rant here about the horror reviewing community and horror communities on social media so if you've reviewed films on instagram at any point you've gotten outreach from somebody

at some point asking you to review their film do a reel about your about their film do this do that whatever and that's great and i get it how else are people making independent films supposed to you know advertise themselves without you know it's basically free marketing and most people don't mind doing it and that's not the point of this the point is i think that there are sometimes when content becomes viral and sensationalized

Just because it keeps getting shared. So I think like when, so for example, you'll find this particular. you know short film on so many lists on tiktok on instagram about you know the best horror short films out right now and i wonder if it's just like because it keeps getting mentioned I don't know, like, almost like the Milkman effect of short films, because there is nothing, like, compared to even some of the other films on this list, I don't think this is anything special, and...

all of the subsequent work at least that you can see from this creator it's the same gag and i guess if that works for you it works for you but i don't know like there are several like i know creators on instagram who've reviewed this like you've done reels about this and all you think about is like dude you you review like splatter porn like you're telling me this scared you you don't need to lie to the people maybe it's

Well, regardless of that, maybe it's more of a younger crowd, like directed towards like high schoolers or like middle schoolers. I don't know. Maybe, maybe, maybe not. I feel with these shorts, if you look in the comments, just about any short you watch, there's going to be someone who was like, this is the scariest thing I've ever seen in my life. Yeah. And you're like, get out of here. right live a little go outside touch some grass

Don't know if this next film is going to hit any harder. It is Double Vision from 2024. It is five minutes long. It's directed by Isabel Kaiser, and it follows a girl on her way home seeing strange things.

so this director also has a short called obscurum and that one is not great and this is definitely the better of the two but again it's like a doppelganger she is experiencing some strange phenomenon and she is at the bottom of her staircase looks up and sees her doppelganger at the top of the stairs and what does she do she turns out the light who gets me

Well, that's what gets me. What the fuck? Maybe if I turn off the light, it'll go away. But no, it doesn't. And it like goes down the stairs really fast at her. Like one of those like jump scary type things. This was a throwaway for me. What I can't understand is obviously there are horror tropes and whatever, and we want to subvert those tropes whenever we can. But why would you subvert that trope? Because Lights Out, it's like, did they watch Lights Out?

Did they care? I don't understand. Why would you turn off the lights? This goes even past when girlfriend went in the house after the door was unlocked.

like what like why would what i mean what do you get there yeah like what do you get from that i just don't understand it's a really short film the girl the director acts in the film she directed it wrote it and acted and she's the only person in the entire project but i don't have anything else to say billy so yeah uh you know doppelganger um i will give the director a little bit of credit um isabel kaiser i believe her name is

This was one of those 48 hour short film contests. So she had one day to shoot it and one day to edit it. So, you know, I'll give her a little bit of leeway on that. I feel it does rely on the score. a bit too much um but yeah my only other note is yeah the whole the turn the lights off um yeah sorry isabel better luck next time i yeah you know

And then she probably turned off the lights so she didn't have to edit that part to help with the timeline. And last but not least, we have Don't Look Back from 2024.

This is a seven-minute short directed by Mitsumoto Yuasa, and it shares this omnibus message. When you go out alone at night, don't look back and go straight home. So this is, I want to say, a Japanese short. Excuse me if I'm wrong. But it follows an office worker. He gets home late. He's out of work late. And he misses his train and he needs to walk home through the creepiest tunnel in the entire countryside for some reason. And he sees a woman in the tunnel.

And she's doing some peculiar things. Yeah, she's slamming her head against the wall. And she's wearing a red dress. Her back is towards the guy walking through the tunnel. And Billy, I know you and I watched a movie last year about the kids escaping from the orphanage and they have to go through a tunnel. Were you getting any of those vibes? What was that movie called? Something about the grave? I can't remember the name of it.

i was getting absentia vibes from the tunnel well yeah yeah yeah he goes past the he walks past our friend who's smashing her head against the wall um he turns around and looks at her They make eye contact and he runs back to his apartment. He runs back to his apartment and then he has a dream and he's back in the tunnel and she gets a boo.

That's how my grandmother used to tell me a story that was very similar to this. It wasn't a dream, it was real life? No, yeah, he went through a door and he went through an alternate dimension. Right, Billy? Tell him if you're fucking with me right now. Yeah, he like... went to the door and then he was back in the tunnel. It was a weird one. You blinked.

yeah i blanked um i mean i identified with the ghost because that's the shit that i would be doing if i was a ghost just fucking standing around smashing my head against the wall i'd probably be wearing a red dress too but um Any anyway. Yeah. Like I was just like, just run, dude. Like, just run. Didn't run. Yeah. So why didn't he like so the instructions provided by the director?

When you go out alone at night, don't look back and go straight home. My guy does not say take a different path. That's not against the rules. Why didn't he just turn around? You're telling me this creepy tunnel is the only way? back to your apartment i'm not convinced why didn't you turn the around like what reasonable human being like if either of you first of all i don't think any of us would be out in a tunnel in the middle of the night but

If you were walking home alone at night and you saw this in the middle of the road, would you legitimately walk by? Like, honest to God, would either of you walk by? Probably not. No, but why was he also so apprehensive about going through that tunnel when he goes through that tunnel probably every day because his apartment's on the other end? Maybe he doesn't. The tunnel logic is not...

Yeah, not following. Well, we've definitely had some high highs and low lows in this watch list. Shall we move on to best and worst? Let's do it. Oh, you got it.

Now you go. Since we've reviewed a lot of stuff tonight, we did some micro reviews. We're going to pick three from the worst and three from the best. So your three worsts and your three bests. Billy, you want to start with worsts?

my um my three worst it looks like i have don't look back man on a train and the pretty well vicious vicious yeah yeah we'll throw in pretty thing yeah all right so i also had vicious was just like the worst because it was way too long i also really didn't like the smiling man I thought that was bad. And I think double vision was also bad. So those are my three worst. I'm also going to say vicious followed by don't look back.

And Double Vision. And Billy, what were your bests of this list? I would say my bests, and it's hard for me to really put them in what order, but I definitely would put Portrait of God up there. lights out, and my house walkthrough. I also dug curve because, you know, I'm a depressed asshole. I have all the same ones as my best. What about you lonely? Oh my God. Me too. Triplets. Yeah. All right. This one's not on our list, but if there's any.

Horror short, I think you need to go out and watch, and I think you should do it right now. Lonely, it's the cat with hands. Just watch it and you'll understand. Is it the scariest film ever? It probably isn't, but there's like a cat that's got hands and it's very freaking creepy. The one that I will offer is from my youth, the crux of my childhood, why I turned out this way. It's called Don't Hug Me, I'm Scared. Have any of you seen this? No, never heard of that. Oh my god, they're like...

Puppets. It's like a demented Sesame Street. And the premise is the puppets need to think creatively. So they are singing a song about being creative and someone gets a little too creative and chaos ensues.

and i don't know what it is about this but i remember watching it as like a kid like probably 10 or 11 and being like petrified to go to sleep that these puppets would like appear in my sleep so that's my contribution don't hug me i'm scared and billy you're a bit of a connoisseur do you have any offerings yes i have several so um one that i just came across

researching for this is on YouTube as well. It's a nine minute film from 2016 called The Maiden. And that one is about a a woman she's going into a house um she's a realtor she's trying to sell it and there's some ghostly things going on in there um there's another one that's actually it goes a little beyond being a short film um

But I have to mention it because I'm a big fan of The Empty Man. And it's David Pryor's film AM1200. And that's on YouTube as well. And if you're a fan of that movie Censor. um about the um video nasties uh that director prano bailey bond did uh her short nasty which is the uh basically the calling card that got her

the ability to turn that into sensor. If you like a bunch of weird shorts, there are some hit and misses, but the ABCs of death one and two, they do, they do offer some good things on there. I think. Susie and I mentioned this on an episode back in the day, Foxes by Lorcan Finnegan. He's the guy who did Vivarium and Without Name. Y'all messed up.

that we talked about um he also directed uh the recent nicholas cage movie the surfer which i really liked um there's one that's a little more in the post-apocalyptic realm on youtube called pipe From 2018, it's 12 minutes long, and it stars Zoe Bell, that actress who's also a stuntwoman who was in, she was a stuntwoman for Kill Bill and was in Death Proof.

And then the last one, I don't know if I mentioned this on Our Worst Fears back in the day, but it's a short film by Shinya Tsukamoto called Haze. where a guy wakes up in a hallway that is just narrow enough for his body to fit in there. And there's a pipe running at the height of his mouth.

And he has to have his mouth wrapped around the pipe so his teeth are biting down on this pipe. And then at his waist level, there's another pipe that he has to use his hands to pull himself down this hallway. That one's a hard one to find. I just have it because I bought the Shinya Tsukamoto box set, but it's pretty dark. I've got something for you guys. I just typed it in the chat. Click on that link.

And go to 1.45. And just watch for 15 seconds. It is Belial's Dream. And it's by Robert Morgan. It's my pal from Basket Case. I can't tell what's happening yet. Is this a dirty picture? It's just disgusting. Did you send a dirty picture? I can't tell if the... sound effects coming from the fucking video were Billy for a second. Okay. Well, thanks for sharing, Susie. What is the dream? What is the... A short film commissioned for the Blu-ray release of...

Basket pace. Watch in 1080. Yeah. So listeners, go find that. It's probably going to be one of the most disturbing things on this list. Instead of deep cuts, because all of these are pretty short and deep. We would recommend you go out and support small creators and check out the media from this episode on YouTube. It will be linked in the show notes. It is that time of the evening where we are going to wind down this riveting.

conversation and we're going to talk a little bit about what kind of short film we would direct if we had unlimited funds and you know no no limits What kind of short film would you direct? And Susie, we're going to start with you. So we've talked about the movie The Relic in the past. And there's one scene that I think could really be a really cool short. And it's a scene where she's in.

the attic of a house and then she's the house is like transforming it's almost like living and breathing and it's like these endless passageways places that lead nothing so my idea would be like expanding on this idea of like living architecture and being stuck in a space you can't escape from and going down hallways endless loops maybe like Something almost analog-y, but also horror. I think I haven't thought enough, but I will think more. Okay.

So this is an idea I've had for a little bit and it might be suited for a feature, but I don't know if you've seen the Robin Williams film One Hour Photo. where he develops people's photos and kind of like become, he kind of like inserts himself into that family. I kind of had an idea about that. And it stems from the work that I do where I'm in people's houses. all day doing work for them. And this is a film where the handyman fix it guy, he kind of thinks he's part of the family.

and he kind of you know he has keys to the house he can go in whenever he wants and he likes to go in at night and look over these people and you think he's trying to do something to them but he's actually their protector and the big twist is that someone does break in when he's there and he fights them off and kills them

you would need a lot of I think that's like a feature you would need a lot of time yeah I think you could I think you could do it in about 15 minutes though I think my short film I would do so a lot of like flash like web browser horror games have this premise and i think it's super fun it's this idea of like a convenience store like you're working at a convenience store or like a gas station or something like in the the

The depths of the evening, you know, like one, two o'clock in the morning and some weird things start happening at the convenience store and, you know, there's, you know.

mystery afoot that would it be about that's what it would be about is like a you know a young teenager like watching the the cash register at a convenience store and you know weird creatures come in like aliens and stuff driving like a ferrari that would be my that's like the plot to yoga hosers no is it fuck not kevin smith granted he i still love red state that is a great film talking about substance it's so good like can we just say the the watch list we've had this evening

And we can say that a Kevin Smith film has that much more substance than what we've watched this evening. It was quite an endurance test, I will say so myself. But we've made it to the end. The end of the night. We have.

So, yeah, Billy, thanks again for coming back and joining us for another pretty long watch list. And I'm glad we got through it. And I'm glad we got to spend the evening with you. So when you're not chatting. analog and horror shorts with us. Where can listeners find more of you and your work? So you can find me at Halloween Babies Podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube, as well as on Instagram under Halloween Babies Podcast.

And when I'm not here, I will be at the shelter trying to adapt some cats with feet or cats with hands. Yeah, I want my cats to have hands. And if I'm not there, I might be on Instagram at projectile underscore underscore environment.

And you can find my reviews and rants for lonely souls over on Instagram at lonely horror club. I try to post reviews whenever the world isn't literally burning to the ground and cause problems. Oh my God, Susie, that is like the worst jump scare I've ever experienced. This is harassment. This is hate crime. And I hope you leave that in. Leave that audio in. It costs problems whenever possible when Susie's not bullying me. You can also find my writing on my website, lilyhorrorclub.com.

Thank you for tuning in to episode 61 of Nobodies. As always, sources, additional reading, and all that fun stuff will be in our show notes. The scary jump scares from Susie will not be, so you are in the clear. Call us if you want to... leave us a message you can give us a call at 617-431-4322 and keep up with our antics on instagram at nobody's horror podcast as soon as you call we will play your voicemail on the air

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