The House of Horrors

Actors:

Federico Lentini              Fred

Tommaso Rinversi          Tom
Pasquale Scarpone         Johnny

Daniel Steinfield            Psychotic

Produced and Directed by: Daniel Steinfield

Released: 10^th June 2007

Genre: Horror

Summary:

Three young boys come to a house to stay for the weekend not knowing what is in store for them. They enter the house and looking around, they do find it a bit suspicious, as Tom and Fred are looking for the house owners Johnny lags behind. Suddenly, a man attacks him from the back and kills him. The two boys then realise that he is not there and go looking for him, finding him dead hidden in the garden. Shocked, scared and panicking they rush to the car to get out of there but Fred had left the keys inside; he rushes back into the house and gets the keys but then the doors are locked. As he rushes out through the other exit the psychotic man kills him. Tom then gets impatient and finds a knife in the car, he goes out looking for Tom and finds him also dead, the psychotic man then attacks him but Tom tackles back and manages to kill him.

Everything done in this short film have the usual conventions for a horror films, it did not break any. Some of the conventions are:

-      Young kids come to stay at a place for a weekend in a spooky house

-      There is a killer on the loose, killing the teenagers there.

-      Ending with the villain dying and 1 or 2 surviving.

Using the expected conventions of a horror film and not being original does affect the quality of the film, it does not improve it  because it is not unique or original; but simply doing what most horror movies do.

The group of young boys are represented in a very typical manner for a horror film, the group usually come to place to have fun and are always young and naive; not knowing what they are about to embark on.

Torodov theory is used in this short story. At first there is equilibrium and the young kids are excited and then it is disequilibrium and the psychotic man is out killing the young. Finally, it goes back to equilibrium when the psychotic man is killed.

I think that this short film was targeted for teenagers because it is the typical horror storyline that attracts that audience. The film maker had used good effects to certain scenes in the short film such as, brightening certain scenes. He also added suitable sound affects to the scenes which draws the audience in more and keeps it in suspense.

My overall personal impression of the film was not so great, i thought that the storyline was very common and there wasn’t anything original about it. I also thought that the actors’ acting was not so great, and they did not put in their full potential into it; this made me lose interest in the film.