It's Day 280 of my project and the year, which means we've made it to Day 6 of the 31 Days of Hallowe'en movie challenges. I'm starting as always, with my own 31 Days of Hallowe'en, which I talked about back in August. My mini prompt today is Vampire Western. I picked After Sundown.
A group of developers unearth a 200 year old corpse, that has a wooden stake in it's chest. They take it to the local morgue, remove the stake and before they know it, the vampire has begun to attack the staff turning them into zombies. But, it's not alone. Another vampire is already loose and feeding in the small town. What will happen when they come face to face?
This has the promise of what could have been a really good B-movie cult classic. The idea is there, it's not totally new, but it's solid enough, the acting is decent; not great but it's a low budget indie film. It creates it's set of rules- if a vampire bites you and gives you it's blood, you turn into a vampire, but if a vampire just bites you and feeds off you then you turn into a zombie. So, you've got both ends of the ghoulstick. Some of the creatures are more intelligent vamps, while others are just mindless zombies. The big downfall for this is it was made in the early 2000's when everyone was doing straight on digital movies. This makes the feel and look of the movie cheaper than I'm sure it was. The sfx suffer because of being shot on digital, as does the lighting. This causes a bit of confusion when they do the flashbacks, as everything looks the same. Had they lit the flashback scenes differently, or resorted to black and white/sepia it would have helped to define the timelines a little more. Had this been given the chance to be shot on film, it would no doubt have a bigger audience.
And the 31 Days of Horror challenge being hosted by Nightmare on Film Street. Today's mini prompt is Ghost Story. I picked Titanic 666.
When the latest cruse ship Titanic III decides to make it's maiden voyage across the same route as it's original namesake, stopping at the same historic location as the tragic accident, all hell breaks loose. Unknown to the staff, a descendant of the original ship has snuck onboard, and decides to get revenge by preforming a seance.
This is another movie that the idea was there, it's not completely original, but it's got bones. We've got witchcraft, ghosts, historical ties, crime, and the effects are low budget but done well.
Both movies I ended up watching for today's challenges were low budget horror, that used isolation as it's main scare more so than the creatures. I think that's key to a great low budget-no budget film. Write with the idea in mind of it needing to be in one main location.
Don't forget to check out my daily Letterboxd lists for all my 2024 movie challenges. I'm also taking part in the #100HorrorMoviesIn92Days challenge too.
Come back tomorrow to see what I've picked for the next round.
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