I was considering two movie reviews in a row over at my other blog. Since it is getting towards the end of the month, I wanted to get at least a couple of more reviews done here as well. I haven't done a whole lot of posts here either, so I decided to go back and forth for at least a couple of reviews. I did knock out a review for It Comes At Night, so check that out sometime if you want to. For here it is time for my Amazon Prime movie! Things got out of order a tad bit this time around but should get back into order after this review. Anyway, I went with the movie Fun Size Horror: Volume One (2015). There is a second volume but oddly enough, it isn't on Amazon Prime.
Fun Size Horror: Volume One is a collection of short films. I didn't time each one, but I would be surprised if any of them went over twenty minutes in length. As usual, I won't touch on all of the shorts, just because I think there are over 20 shorts in this collection. I will highlight a few, mostly favorites I think. As with any short film collection, there are some I really liked and some I really hated.
Things open up with a pretty good short called When They Say You Are Alone by writer/director Grant Olin. This was a pretty simple short film. Some mysterious people gather around the bed of a sleeping person. Even though there is small evidence of the people being there, the person never seems to be aware of them. It is a pretty simple short, with no talking at all going on. While maybe not all that scary maybe, it has some nice tension to it since we don't know what is going on at first.
I really enjoyed the short Paramnesia by writer/director Michael May. A woman is with her boyfriend and they are talking about getting married. However, as the conversation and celebration go on, she begins to figure out that not all is real. The cause of this is interesting to me. It is a different kind of story, which is mostly what I liked about it, but it does end rather quickly. I had to go back to make sure I didn't miss something because it ended so quickly.
Quad was by witter Nick Bragg and directed by Ali Presley Paras. The story here wasn't all that special, with a small group of friends watching a horror movie and not realizing that someone is lurking around planning to kill them. I did like that it wasn't simply a movie where they don't fight back. What I liked most about it though was the way it was edited. There are four squares, basically one square for each character. Sometimes the squares merge into each other as a character shares a moment with another character. It is a little distracting trying to watch four things at once, but at the same time, it was different.
There are two I didn't like at all. I don't recall the name of one of them, but it followed the short Bad Eggs, which I also didn't like either. Bad Eggs was by writer/director Max Isaacson. It doesn't get much cheaper to make a short horror film than this. It features two hands acting like they are talking with voice-overs. One complains about eating bad eggs. I just found it to be a little too silly and it didn't fit in with the rest of the shorts.
For the most part, the acting wasn't bad at all. I was fine with everyone in the different shorts and nothing stood out to me as bad acting. The actor that stood out to me the most was Allie Gonino, who appears in the last short film featured called The Collection. The effects ranged from good to bad. None of the shorts were ever real gory, but there was still some good effects and makeup to be found. The only effects I didn't like all the well were the kind that used CGI. The short Somebody's Watching You stood out to me for that reason.
I liked more than the three shorts that I listed above, but I can't really count them as favorites just because there were things about them that made this short feel more average. Somebody's Watching You is a good example of that. I liked the story that seems to present itself as a reality TV show, but then it twists into someone controlling the five women in the house and forcing them to choose who will dir next, either by their own hand or by whoever is controlling things. The women get to pick, but if they don't then it will a random woman who gets killed. It was interesting and there was also a bit of a twist on how two of the women knew each other. The effects knocked it down to just an average short movie though. The Creepy F*cking Kid In Apartment B was another one that stood out to me at first, with a woman noticing a kid who lives in the same building as her saying weird things. It was kind of funny and interesting, but I didn't find the payoff to be all that great.
Fun Size Horror: Volume One isn't the best short collection around, but it is still a fun watch. I have discovered that a number of the shorts are on YouTube, which you can find under the Fun Size Horror channel there. Not all of them show up there, but it should give you an idea if you want to watch the entire movie. While I wasn't impressed with all the shorts, I still think it is worth a watch sometime. I do wish they had the second volume as well. I would be glad to give it a try as well, but maybe I can find it elsewhere.
3 out of 5 A camera can steal your soul!
Fun Size Horror: Volume One is a collection of short films. I didn't time each one, but I would be surprised if any of them went over twenty minutes in length. As usual, I won't touch on all of the shorts, just because I think there are over 20 shorts in this collection. I will highlight a few, mostly favorites I think. As with any short film collection, there are some I really liked and some I really hated.
Things open up with a pretty good short called When They Say You Are Alone by writer/director Grant Olin. This was a pretty simple short film. Some mysterious people gather around the bed of a sleeping person. Even though there is small evidence of the people being there, the person never seems to be aware of them. It is a pretty simple short, with no talking at all going on. While maybe not all that scary maybe, it has some nice tension to it since we don't know what is going on at first.
I really enjoyed the short Paramnesia by writer/director Michael May. A woman is with her boyfriend and they are talking about getting married. However, as the conversation and celebration go on, she begins to figure out that not all is real. The cause of this is interesting to me. It is a different kind of story, which is mostly what I liked about it, but it does end rather quickly. I had to go back to make sure I didn't miss something because it ended so quickly.
Quad was by witter Nick Bragg and directed by Ali Presley Paras. The story here wasn't all that special, with a small group of friends watching a horror movie and not realizing that someone is lurking around planning to kill them. I did like that it wasn't simply a movie where they don't fight back. What I liked most about it though was the way it was edited. There are four squares, basically one square for each character. Sometimes the squares merge into each other as a character shares a moment with another character. It is a little distracting trying to watch four things at once, but at the same time, it was different.
There are two I didn't like at all. I don't recall the name of one of them, but it followed the short Bad Eggs, which I also didn't like either. Bad Eggs was by writer/director Max Isaacson. It doesn't get much cheaper to make a short horror film than this. It features two hands acting like they are talking with voice-overs. One complains about eating bad eggs. I just found it to be a little too silly and it didn't fit in with the rest of the shorts.
For the most part, the acting wasn't bad at all. I was fine with everyone in the different shorts and nothing stood out to me as bad acting. The actor that stood out to me the most was Allie Gonino, who appears in the last short film featured called The Collection. The effects ranged from good to bad. None of the shorts were ever real gory, but there was still some good effects and makeup to be found. The only effects I didn't like all the well were the kind that used CGI. The short Somebody's Watching You stood out to me for that reason.
I liked more than the three shorts that I listed above, but I can't really count them as favorites just because there were things about them that made this short feel more average. Somebody's Watching You is a good example of that. I liked the story that seems to present itself as a reality TV show, but then it twists into someone controlling the five women in the house and forcing them to choose who will dir next, either by their own hand or by whoever is controlling things. The women get to pick, but if they don't then it will a random woman who gets killed. It was interesting and there was also a bit of a twist on how two of the women knew each other. The effects knocked it down to just an average short movie though. The Creepy F*cking Kid In Apartment B was another one that stood out to me at first, with a woman noticing a kid who lives in the same building as her saying weird things. It was kind of funny and interesting, but I didn't find the payoff to be all that great.
Fun Size Horror: Volume One isn't the best short collection around, but it is still a fun watch. I have discovered that a number of the shorts are on YouTube, which you can find under the Fun Size Horror channel there. Not all of them show up there, but it should give you an idea if you want to watch the entire movie. While I wasn't impressed with all the shorts, I still think it is worth a watch sometime. I do wish they had the second volume as well. I would be glad to give it a try as well, but maybe I can find it elsewhere.
3 out of 5 A camera can steal your soul!
