365 Days of Horror, Day 20: Black, Episode 3

source: yodrama.com

What a game-changing episode. Two episodes in of k-drama Black and I’m pleasantly surprised by the sharp curveball this show has thrown me. Up until now it’s been a drama with police procedural elements but with a greater focus on the characters – the quirkiest of which is a wholly different kind of psychic. But since that apparently wasn’t enough, we’ve got an ENTIRELY new set of characters and literally a whole other world with its own rules, subplots and twists and turns thrown in.

We’ve literally only been watching half of the show up to this point.

I’m excited to see where these new developments are going to take us. There’s new sources of humour, new in-world rules and details, messier relationships, and compleely new plot dynamics. I thought the show was already cooking before, but it’s bloody marinating in itself now.

Score: 🎃🎃🎃🎃

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365 Days of Horror, Day 19: Tales from the Crypt 2×16: Television Terror

“Television Terror”, episode 16 of season 2 of Tales from the Crypt, has cheese in all the right places. I love a good haunted house tale, especially when a loutish dick of a main character has to undergo its torture. Said tool is a news presenter (Morton Downey Jr) keen to boost ratings by doing a sensationalised report from within an abandoned murder house.

Yes, it’s predictable right up until the very end, but it’s bloody good fun: gore, spooks, bug-eyed overacting – it’s an episode to play alongside a popcorn-hurling drinking contest.

Score: 🎃🎃🎃

365 Days of Horror, Day 18: Neighbors [short] [2017]

Well…there’s a lot packed into these less than 4 minutes, and it somehow does it with some unsettling dark humour. In director Charlene Bagcal‘s moody short Neighbors, there’s gore, decadence, bizarre creature design, and a cautionary kicker of an ending. It’s like a modern-day, campfire Wicker Man tale squeezed into the below.

Score: 🎃🎃🎃

365 Days of Horror, Day 17: Last Night [short] [2016]

This wordless, slow-burn student-made slasher makes memorable use of Cigarettes After Sex’s Nothing’s Gonna Hurt You Baby. It’s a simple 6 minutes: a young woman makes her date some pretty decent-looking stakes, they gaze at each other over red wine, and then the inevitable Plot Thing happens.

While pretty to look at, it’s all a bit overwrought, with its obtuse angles, jump cuts and a puddle of an ending that asks more questions than it answers. Still, points for the song.

Score: 🎃🎃

 

365 Days of Horror, Day 16: Tales from the Crypt 6×16: Comes the Dawn

The 16th episode of season 6 was pretty forgettable, despite vampires in the Alaskan wilderness. I honestly can’t find anything memorable to say about it, so I’ll just jump straight to the score.

Score: 🎃

365 Days of Horror, Day 15: Channel Zero: No-End House [2×03]

 

While much of Channel Zero is about inserting the stabby-stabby where you least expect it, the season’s third episode was more about building that dread. Packed full of insidious, unnerving moments, it was a different kind of creepiness that got under my skin and never quite left.

More of the No-End’s house is built, but more questions are raised than answered (the latter: none). Despite this, it hasn’t ventured into meandering filler territory yet; much like the house itself, it plays trick after trick with your mind, until it’s a consigned puddle of goo.

And you’ll never trust your family again.

Score: 🎃🎃🎃

365 Days of Horror, Day 14: Black, Episodes 1 & 2

source: yodrama.com

Netflix has been quietly serving up some great offerings on the Kdrama (Korean drama) front. This is one of their ‘originals’ (though that term seems to cover just exclusives to Netflix that weren’t commissioned by Netflix, such as Riverdale). Black is one of those exclusives to the UK, and I was hooked from the first couple of scenes.

Before you scroll past, take heed that this genuinely is a good show to watch if you either don’t think you’re into Kdrama, or you’re not interested in soppy romantic girls yelling ‘oppa!’ at her love interest. This one is different – I promise.

365 Days of Horror, Day 13: The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula [BBC radio 4 play] [2016]

My friend (let’s say ‘ghoul friend’) introduced me to the world of horror radio with this aural gem. Adapted from an unproduced Hammer Horror screenplay, The Unquenchable Thirst of Dracula finds our iconic bloodsucker in……1930s India.

365 Days of Horror, Day 12: Lock Up [short] [2011]

Two years before fellow short Lights Out, there was another little horror preying on our fear of being alone in the dark. Ben Franklin’s eerie office slice Lock Up is a tense, fun 3 minutes, in which an everyman pencil-pusher realises that, under cover of mostly darkness, an empty office looks nightmarishly different.

Well-acted with some great makeup and some efficient editing, this is cautionary tale against all of you schlubs working late. Unless you get overtime or time off in lieu, don’t. They can’t make you!

Score: 🎃🎃🎃

365 Days of Horror, Day 11: Death Metal [short] [2016]

I can safely say I’ve seen and/or heard every type of human be slaughtered in this naughtily gruesome comedy short.

More enjoyable to me than the mildly similar Deathgasm, Chris McInroy‘s SFX-laden Death Metal is a devilish treat for gorehounds. An adult slacker and musician is gifted an impressive guitar (literally fashioned from an axe), a cursed-object heirloom that promises its wielder infinite death-metalling power.

Unfortunately, our protagonist is too excited to stick around to hear the 3 simple rules [don’t play in daylight, don’t use it for money, don’t play it like you’re wanking], and bolts down to the park to start some mid-afternoon busking. No sooner does he do said penis-strumming move, than the axe flies out of his hands and literally shreds everything in sight in a gloriously gruesome never-ending POV shot.

Memorable, and not just for metalheads. But the music’s not half-bad, either.

Score: 🎃🎃🎃🎃