Lion (2017)

Some of you who have been with me long enough might remember me covering two short horror films, The Puzzle (2008) and The Sweet Hand of the White Rose (2010), from Italian filmmaker Davide Melini (assistant director for Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears (2008), Penny Dreadful and Into the Badlands). These were pretty good and provided me with a new experience in reviewing movies much shorter than I was used to. I also briefly spotlighted Melini’s supernatural horror/giallo hybrid Deep Shock (2019) back when it was still in pre-production. The film was delayed for quite some time but was eventually released in 2019. It has a cool classic and modern feel to it with a brutal bathroom murder scene that is worthy of the giallo style film it is celebrating.  

Davide Melini’s horror short from the UK titled Lion is boasted as being the most awarded horror short film in history. It feels like a runaway award effect is taking place with the film, as it is now up to a staggering 902 awards – which are individually posted on the film’s socials.

Colour from the Dark (2008)

Ivan Zuccon’s COLOUR FROM THE DARK is an adaptation to my favorite and in my opinion most frightening H.P. Lovecraft story, THE COLOUR OUT OF SPACE. Zuccon’s film runs its own unique ideas alongside Lovecraft’s story fairly smoothly, helping it to be more than just a mere retelling. The outcome of how the characters are affected by a life draining contamination on a farm is similar in both tales, but the means is much more demonic and supernatural in Zuccon’s, while that in Lovecraft’s is something alien and chronically hazardous that feels realistic and not all together unlike a nuclear fallout. 

The most interesting original idea introduced in the film is the character of Alice (Marysia Kay), a mute childish woman, who despite being around 22 years old, is very much a portrait of a young and easily frightened child. She has a fear of the stairway in her home and when passing through it an anxiety generates in her that causes her to rush down the stairs afraid of something unseen and unknown. This easily reminds me of that same fear we felt as children all alone late at night in the hallways of our own homes, afraid of something not there, with an impulse to run through the hallway and back into bed under the secure blankets after a late night trip to the bathroom. Alice has a tendency to rely on her doll for security from the perceived hidden threats that lurk in the dark. Wandering around late at night, she covers one hand over her eyes while looking though her fingers and holding her doll out in front of her as if the doll is her protector, watching and letting her know if it is safe ahead. This introduction to Alice at the beginning of the film made me feel that I was in store for something pretty interesting with that surreal sensibility one can expect from Zuccon.