With the Halloween season fast approaching we were lucky enough to catch writer and director Thomas Crane’s new horror short film HALLOWEEN PARTY. The film stars Sean Gloria, Alanna Dawn, Tony Riha and Jorge Diaz and despite us labeling it as a short the movie itself actually clocks in at 37 minutes so it certainly feels more like a shortened feature length effort. And thankfully it still has all the qualities and impact that most full length horror features have.
“It’s October 31, 1995. Local hero Ben Davister is at home preparing for his annual Halloween party when a catatonic woman, covered in blood, shows up at his door. Throughout the evening, it becomes apparent that they both have their secrets they’d like to hide.”
There’s usually plenty to be scared of on Halloween especially when you’re opening your door to complete strangers all night long and for Ben Davister (played by Sean Gloria) it seems he has some unexpected surprises in store when he starts handing out the treats on Halloween night. But it’s not just Ben who ends up facing the surprises, the audience themselves will also be in for a few shocks along the way as things turn out a little more unexpected than initially believed.
The performances are solid for such a low-budget production and Gloria himself deserves a lot of credit for managing to make his character both likeable yet deceivingly enigmatic. HALLOWEEN PARTY is accompanied by a surprisingly effective score, composed neatly by Frederic Bernard, and it gives the whole experience a real retro feel, dinking in and out of almost recognisable horror-esque themes and styles yet managing to expertly keep the right level of tension in place where necessary.
There are clearly echoes of Psycho peppered throughout the movie and even the frequent switching between colour and black and white helps further emphasise the on-screen emotion, drama and more importantly the slowly-engaging fear and ultimate twists and turns that audiences follow as the story progresses.
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