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Watch: Award-Winning Horror Short ‘Here There Be Monsters’
Australian horror is home to some creepy little creature features. When the entire country is full of animals that are probably trying to kill you, you’re bound to find some inspiration in nature. And then there’s the fantastic “fear thy neighbor” films that prove just how scary some people can be. In Here There Be Monsters — an Australian horror short — we’re introduced to these top two types of terror; the villains we know, and the creatures we don’t.
After incessant bullying on the bus ride home, a young girl falls asleep and ends up trapped inside the school bus at the empty depot. Her frustration quickly turns to dread when she sees something lurking in the vast dark yard – something big – and Elki’s going to have to summon up every piece of courage she didn’t know she had if she’s going to survive the night.
Here There Be Monsters is free of dialogue, which makes the sound and music so very important. Erin McKimm does an incredible job with such a simple musical theme that’s woven throughout the short. It’s heartbreaking and honest, and communicates volumes of emotion alongside Savannah Foran-McDaniel’s delicate yet powerful performance as Elki.
As you watch the opening sequence — Elki being bullied on a school bus — you want nothing more than to throw your arms around her in a gesture of support and protection. It’s a brief snapshot of Elki’s life, but it’s effective in communicating a deep level of pain. Foran-McDaniel is commanding as the short’s lead and focus, drawing the audience along with her as we feel her fear and frustration.
The short showcases a satisfying practical monster design, which was designed, built, and operated by the team at Steve Boyle FX. The monster’s spine-tingling sound was born from the vocal skills of world famous beat boxer Tom Thum and engineered by sound designer Pete Christie. The result is a real down-to-earth terror that could feasibly crawl right out of the Australian muck (from whence it ostensibly came).
The film has played at 50+ festivals around the world, including Sitges, Hollyshorts, Screamfest and many more genre favorites, winning multiple awards along the way. Writer/director Drew MacDonald describes it as “something of a throwback creature feature mixed with a contemporary story about bullying”. But Here There Be Monsters is not just a cool creature feature, it carries a weight through its theme, focusing on the transference of anger.
There’s a complexity that runs through the short’s approach to bullying, demonstrating the cycles of anger and fear we fall into. MacDonald airs the dirty laundry of the bully’s situation in just a few seconds, offering a balanced and humbling angle to a once abhorrent character. The final moments are impactful, daring the audience to find the monster on screen.
You can watch the full Here There Be Monsters film on YouTube below, courtesy of Alter.
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Movies
‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments
It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.
We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.
“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”
That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”
Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:
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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening
Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.
Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.
Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.
Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.
Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.
The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.
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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date
Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.
Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.
These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:
According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”
Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.
Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.
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