What film would Alex Magana make if he were a robot? This is a question that no one wanted answered, but Elevate Studios said, TOUGH, you are gettin it! And get it we did!
Many worry that AI will take over the world and our jobs; well, I’m here to tell you that you are 50% correct! AI will likely take your job, but not the world because it’ll just be too busy making boring/terrible short films. Hey Robots, look I get that you feel like you got a full head of steam here, but why make terrible movies? We have people for that and those are jobs that are too good for you. This short is about a priest called into perform and exorcism and he proceeds to punch the possessed woman and the demon leaves her. Yes, that was the whole film. I feel less now that I have seen this.
I put together a short myself using AI to show what it will be like when AI displaces humans:
Will the Robot unalive us all? I don’t know, but they will sure try to bore us to death!
A girl and her gay friend are watching cheesy scary movies together. He reminded me of my sister’s gay best friend in college. It’ll be difficult for me to hate this because of pleasant nostalgia; so again, my fingers are crossed.
They get a threatening phone call and run panicked through the house. They hide in the bathroom tub and begin confessing the worst things that they did to each other. Then, it turns out they were not being stalked. What worked? I liked the camera work. The plot was good and it had a clear storyline and resolution. It’s not the greatest short that I have ever seen, but it was entertaining. What didn’t work? I didn’t get the costume change at the end, but it was … fine. See it below!
It is fun to review a Chris McInroy short film. They are great horror comedy with copious gore. The actors are obviously friends of his that know how to deliver a joke. Chris also knows how to use a brief silence for a bigger laugh. He’s the Anti-Alex Magana. If you watch more than two Alex Magana films in one sitting, you wonder if humankind should really keep going. Whereas, these are a pleasure to watch and review. Side note the amount of blood and gore are Sam Raimi levels.
Two bros are meeting a fellow bro for kickball, but their comrade has joined a satanic cult. Here’s the twist, all of the cultist are terrible at their job. What is refreshing is that there are no Mary Sues or Mike Sues- EVERYONE in this cult is a moron! Black, white, asian, libertarian, or vegetarian ALL are equally stupid and it is hilarious! There is a kickball decapitation that is priceless! I highly recommend this short!
This is an example of a perfect short film! Sometimes life is just awful and you find that Hell has sub-basements. I am currently in the next to last sub-basement; yes, it really is that bad. At times like that, Richard Morgan, the author of Altered Carbon wrote “You take what’s offered….sometimes you just need to get to the next screen.” Working with Jigsaw was one of those moments for me. It was funny enough to make my brain take a brief break and allow me to laugh. Trust me, if a film is funny enough to make me laugh at this time in my life, you might literally pee your pants or poo or pee/poo them. What I am trying say is that you should wear your peeing yourself pants while watching this and then shower- Don’t be gross!
Thanks Al
The plot is right in the title and you get what you were promised. You know you have something special when the writer and director know that 3 minutes and 43 seconds is actually longer that you think. Why is that important? It is critical to have the time awareness because it frees the short film director to use silence to set up a reaction. In this film, the silences set up the punchlines, but it a straight horror short it allows for suspense, payoff, and even to have a moment to care about the characters. Most of the shorts I watch are either pitches in disguise or worse they don’t use their time wisely to make you care that the characters are in peril.
Working with Jigsaw pulls together the concept of a malevolent force being awful at work. Jigsaw is constantly interfering with people’s work to make them play his non-lethal but horribly annoying games. The HR scene at the end is film gold!
I really can’t say enough nice things about this short. Both writers got jobs working for Jimmy Kimmel after this short, which fills with rare joy! I hope they continue to make short films and feature length comedies- they are truly gifted artists!
You’re not that bad because Alex Magana makes films. He’s like how Alabama can look down on Mississippi. It has been a Horrorthon tradition that I review his “art”, but it is difficult. 1 Million people watched this short, which tells me that WE NEED A DRAFT! Being an Alex Magana fan is like being proud of your artisanal meth pipe or bragging about doing a TED talk about the THIRD time you got gonorrhea. I do have to admit that his film does have beginning middle and an end; so, it is a short film. Someone has to review it and who else would do this to themselves, but me????
The Teacher begins with two teens warning each other that if they don’t finish their homework, The Teacher will kill them. One of them does not finish her homework; so, she gets killed by the eponymous Teacher. I do have to admit that for Alex this is good because unlike the Smiling Woman crapfest, The Teacher has rules and a Strumplepeter message. Therefore, it does have some literary ancestry. It is still awful, but not as awful as what he usually does to us. It’s like a jab to the eyes rather than his usual Mortal Kombat finishing move to the eyes. Enjoy…I guess.
Stephen King has had addiction issues his entire adult life. He’s very open about it. In fact, there are at least three books he’s said that he doesn’t remember writing because he was using more blow than Julie on The Love Boat- the books are The Shining, Misery, and The Tommyknockers.
The plot is that a spaceship crashed long ago in Maine and it takes over the brains of the lifeforms who interact with it. The main characters are Roberta AKA Bobbi who literally stumbles on part of the ship, starting the plot because it starts infecting the town. Gard, a four alarm alcoholic/poet and Bobbi’s former lover, comes to help her and is immune to the ship’s affect because of a steel plate in his head.
As the story progresses, the ship changes the town folk both mentally and physically. The townies make all kinds of wacky and interesting inventions without knowing how they work, lose most of their teeth, and they develop pig-like faces. I told you that he did a lot of cocaine when he wrote this book.
The townies use Gard to help them dig out the ship and there are MANY chapters on the digging logistics. It’s fair to say that Gard spent most of his time in this book as an alcoholic day laborer (maybe he even did some work on my upstairs bathroom because that was done really shitty). I think that you could actually say they were entire chapters just devoted to his digging and things like that; man, Stephen really needs an editor with a spine.
A classic Stephen King plot device is that there are people who power up a haunted house and Tommyknockers uses that to an extreme! Even before I became an engineer, I wonder if Stephen understood how batteries worked? Can you imagine what he did to his kid’s Christmas toys?!
While his stories have recurring plot devices, the heroic journey for his characters changed with his personal change in fortune. The stories in Night Shift and the others from the early part of his career were all about failure: failing your loved ones and failing to maintain control over your life. In those years, the heroes could only succeed by sacrificing their life. The way to stop from harming everyone around them was through suicide because “blood calls to blood” i.e. the family curse. I think that it is clear that the Blood is alcoholism and drug abuse- it’s inherited. When he was failing in life, suicide was described as the only option because the hero was the doorway to misery and I can tell you from my childhood an alcoholic father is definitely the doorway to misery.
After 1979, his career took off and his bank account to pay for copious amounts of cocaine. However, the happy endings became the standard. Money can cure a lot problems, but blood calls to blood and the demons will always remain, but that is what made this book stand out because like his novels in the early part of his career- the hero dies. He can’t save Bobbi and this book was at a high point of addiction. It seems clear to me that it crossed his mind that he couldn’t live with his addiction and that death was the only exit.
Tommyknockers is a messy beach read that is mostly entertaining. If you’re like on a vacation with some real downtime and the Wi-Fi is broken or you’re really into aliens, give it a read.
As my readers probably know, I’m one of actor Charles Bronson’s biggest fans, and I’m always on the lookout for venues showing his films on the big screen. In the summer of 2024, the Ron Robinson theatre in downtown Little Rock screened the 1953 Vincent Price classic, HOUSE OF WAX, which features Bronson in one of his earliest on-screen roles. It was so early, he was still being billed as Charles Buchinsky! Of course I wasn’t going to miss it!
HOUSE OF WAX stars Vincent Price as Professor Henry Jarrod, a talented wax sculptor in early 20th-century New York City. Jarrod’s museum, which features historical figures that look amazingly lifelike, is his pride and joy. However, his business partner, Matthew Burke (Roy Roberts), has grown impatient with his investment and decides he wants to burn down the wax museum for the insurance money. When Jarrod refuses to take part in the fraudulent scheme, Burke sets the museum on fire, leaving Jarrod presumed dead in the process. But Jarrod survives, and with the help of his mute henchman Igor (Charles Bronson), returns to open a new wax museum with a dark and dangerous twist… his exhibits are eerily lifelike because they are real bodies coated in wax. As his former friend Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk) and her boyfriend Scott Andrews (Paul Picerni) snoop around the house of wax, they begin to suspect that Jarrod has lost his mind and has descended into the mad depths of murder. Will they be able to expose Jarrod’s gruesome secret, or will they become his next exhibit?!!
Directed by André de Toth, HOUSE OF WAX is a landmark horror film, notable for its early use of 3D and Vincent Price’s excellent performance. The film’s strength lies in its undeniably creepy premise, that of turning human beings into wax sculptures, as well as Price’s ability to blend sophistication with menace. Jarrod is quite the sympathetic character at first, but he’s gradually revealed to be certifiably insane as a result of his near-death experience, and that transformation is quite scary. Young Charles Bronson’s portrayal of Igor is also quite freaky. His cold, blank, murderous stare says, “I’ll kill you and not even think twice about it.” His stalking of the heroine, played by Phyllis Kirk, in the dark, spooky house of wax near the end, is one of the true highlights of the movie. It’s also fun seeing Carolyn Jones (AKA Morticia Addams) show up as a spirited victim of the madman! Of course, you can’t help but notice the moments set up for the 3D effects, which come off as quite gimmicky at this point. I specifically took note of the movie’s use of paddleballs and leg kicks! I must admit, however, that these dated elements add to the overall charm of HOUSE OF WAX as a reminder of the olden days of 50’s Hollywood!
Overall, in my humble opinion, HOUSE OF WAX is a classic scary movie. It’s a perfect treat for fans of vintage horror as well as a testament to the magnetic screen presence of Vincent Price!
Happy Horrorthon! I have seen a lot of bad movies over the years, but this might be the worst movie ever made. “The Room” by Tommy Wiseau is provably better than “Shark Encounters of the Third Kind” because much of “The Room” took place in rooms; whereas, this “shark horror film (note the poster above)” took place mostly on land, kitchens, parking lots, docks, and a creepy onanist’s basement. There is actually a scene where an incel guy slowly walks down the stairs to his “Man Basement” and puts in a VHS tape, sighs, leans back, and…. he watches a documentary on alien abductions. Yep, that’s all he was up to…watching a documentary. “Shark Encounters of the Third Kind” sponsored by the Carpal Tunnel Foundation of America.
Some of you might be like- “Case, you always judge these films really hard and these people have feelings… probably.” Hear me out, the Polonias (this films’ director/producer) and Alex Maganas (Smiling Woman creator) of the world don’t care about my feelings when they make these terrible things. I was thinking: is there a way that I would be able to give this film a positive review? I think so: if my neighbor had a three year old and this three year old told me, “Mr. Casey, I made a movie and a boom boom.” I’d watch the movie with his family and cheer him on, but this is not the case here. So, this movie gets no breaks from me. Really, look at the villains!
This Alien Has EVIL Potholders! I believe this is the plot: the villains are NOT the sharks. The villains are aliens who are doing a reconnaissance mission to earth and there are sharks involved somehow – rarely. Mostly, this film is a big honking crazy mess. The poster is not terrible…. so there’s that.
Another observation: the film is really into doing closeups….A LOT. For example, they spend a lot of time on this actor’s face (below). He is definitely NOT a shark. You wonder why this movie only has 8 minutes of shark scenes. I think the shark scenes were too expensive and you need to make more time for Oven Mitt Alien guy (above).
There is really no reason for you to watch this film. I’m sure that you have done something good in your life- spare yourself.
His title card was terrible so I’m using the New York Yankees. Why not? We have a haunted house theme in this story where Google speaker is involved. Alexa’s evil twin. The main character is at his house, which I believe is probably Levi’s residence because his films always take place there. He ask google speaker to help him, but she has turned…..EVIL!!! The main character asks to google to turn the light back on upstairs and he sees…… a shape. This is kinda scary. Google speaker puts on license free music on for mood; so, evil or not- she is protecting Levi’s shoestring budget. I give him credit for editing in music.
The character unplugs the device and it still talks. It’s a good trope. I don’t hate on that. There is a guy in his house who has a cloak on, which is definitely bad. The shape approaches him. He begs google to turn on the light, but instead she goes rogue and turns off the lights.
I meant to watch a horror comedy, but oops – it’s just horror. I actually might put this in the thriller category because there’s an artificial intelligence working in collusion with the evil shape- is that like a google prime option? I mean I’m not saying that we should pay for google to do evil, but I mean….a little evil? Nothing permanent- mild evil like crappy salsa that never satisfies.
I do admit that I feel bad for Levi Morgan because he hasn’t done anything since 2023 and he’s doing some normal job now. His films are good enough. Levi’s not Hitchcock, but he’s better than Alex Magana and that’s important. I hope he makes it a vibrant hobby. Levi is just not great at writing. His scene angle setups and cinematography is not bad. Levi can make a scene suspenseful and I think he would be a good director of photography. He does need a writer. God doesn’t give with both hands and I would encourage him to pursue a career as a Director of Photography and Directing. I’m not gonna crap on him. He’s has talent and should focus on cinematography.
Death has been on my mind A LOT the past several months. I recently lost my Uncle and he was a lot closer to a Dad than what I was assigned. My uncle lived an authentic life and was OUT when it was not okay to be out, but in the words of the philosopher Bruce Springsteen- “Closets are for Hangers.” Sadly, he suffered a great deal, but he faced Death like a Man.
In this short, Death has a life- A really really really banal life. He acts out in school, gets drunk in college, marries, and gets run over by a car. Actually, how he died was the most interesting event that happened to Death.
I’m really trying to be nice here, but sometimes I just can’t. You might notice that I tagged Alex Magana; well, he makes terrible short films too and I feel like Alex should get a royalty when someone else spits out a crappy film. Apparently, Marcin won some awards for THIS??! So ugggghhh, I guess people like terrible things sometimes.
Where did the short go right? It had a beginning, middle, and an end. I can write that without a doubt that this was a film that was made. Also, this film had a script where words were written down. I can assume that real dollars were spent to make this…film, which is fine. I mean, well people can buy all sorts of things with cash. It should be noted that as a society we forbid people to spend money on certain things: murder/heroin; maybe, this could be considered to make that list…let’s not rule that out. He did murder my time and patience.
Where did it go wrong? It was boring. I really just did not care that Death had a boring life or that he had children. If anything, I thought it was tacky. I really didn’t find the writing really moving. I never cared about Death as a “Person”. I did Chuckle Out Loud COL once, but that’s it. You could say, Case, you’re down and grieving; of course, you’ll hate this, BUT I argue that this short-film is still crap and the filmmaker is not great and should do something else with his time. Decoupage? Extreme Couponing? Boxing? Whatever, just stop bothering us.
I once wrote that we could stop Alex Magana from making films – he can only be so strong and if we ganged up and brought a tall guy, we could taunt him by holding his camera up really high and make him futilely jump for it. There’s basically TWO Alex Magana’s now; so, we might have to bring more people into stopping them, but we can do this! Left, Right, Libertarian, or Vegetarian let’s stop them- TOGETHER!
Through the Shattered Lens 