THE SOURCE OF SHADOWS (2020)

Studio:      Freestyle Digital Media
Director:    Various
Writer:      Various
Producer:  Ryan Bury, Vic May, Eugueni Shebshayevich, Kayla Vosburg
Stars:     Various

Review Score:

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Summary:

10 short horror stories from different filmmakers explore the universal fear of the unknown.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

TETHERED (Director: Dan Robinette, Writer: 4 Leagues Media) – Solomon, who is blind, lives alone in a forest according to three rules left behind by his missing mother. His mother’s audiotape stresses that the most important rule is to never wander further into the woods than the length of rope tethering Solomon to his cabin permits. Solomon’s curiosity eventually takes him so far that he loses the rope. A witch-like woman in chains who turns out to be Solomon’s mother attacks.

INSIDE THE HOUSE (Writer/Director: Jennifer Bonior, Dycee Wildman) – From outside, a creep stalks a girl home alone. While chopping carrots, the girl sneezes and inadvertently stabs her eye. Despite pulling out her eyeball and bleeding profusely, the girl continues chopping while the stalker simply steps away from the window.

AM BERG (Writer/Director: Nicole Scherer) – A witch torments a hunter living alone in a mountain cabin. The witch ultimately murders the man and eats him.

ADRIFT (Director: John Rushing, Writer: Ryan Bury, Sean Cruser) – Vincent poisons his wife Katherine while alone on a boat at sea. Vincent puts Katherine’s body in a dinghy and sets it to drift away. Later, the empty dinghy inexplicably returns to Vincent’s boat while Vincent’s wedding ring somehow returns to his finger. Frightened by strange noises and visions of his dead wife, Vincent abandons the boat in the dinghy. By morning, Vincent disappears from the dinghy.

DON’T LOOK INTO THEIR EYES (Writer/Director: John Rhee) – Edie hides under her bed from a demon that regularly haunts her. The demon stands on its head to stare at Edie before seemingly attacking her. A real estate agent later shows the home to a young couple as the demon is seen lurking in a shadow.

BESTIA (Writer/Director: Gigi Saul Guerrero) – A hunter wakes up disoriented at a forest pond. Fleeing from frightening noises, the hunter triggers one of his own steel traps. Attempting to kill the unseen beast chasing him, the hunter ends up stabbing himself in the heart and dying. The beast’s reflection appears in the hunter’s eye.

BANSHEE (Director: Adam O’Brien, Writer: Jerome Gariepy, Julien Maisonneuve) – After disappearing in the woods while her older sister Eli was supposed to be watching her, Olivia Brown returned home weirdly unable to draw anything but a banshee. Although she doesn’t remember what happened, Olivia remains haunted by the experience. The banshee ultimately possesses Olivia before eating Eli by dislocating its jaw.

TRANSIENT (Director: Ryan Bury, Sean Cruser, Writer: Ryan Bury) – An unidentified man secretly lives in a couple’s home by using their things and retreating to other rooms when they are there. After the couple goes to sleep, the man emerges from beneath their bed holding a knife.

BEASTLY THINGS (Director: Zev Chevat) – Schoolchildren transform into creatures that chase a young street artist through the city. After cornering the artist in a crypt, the children become spooked by the artist’s ominous shadow and retreat. The artist smiles with a demonic grin.

WITHHELD (Writer/Director: James Bowsher) – Over the phone, obsessive client Jeremy blackmails phone sex worker Stephanie by threatening to expose recordings of her performances to friends and family. Jeremy humiliates and terrifies Stephanie with his demands, which culminate in forcing Stephanie to remove her panties. Stephanie turns the tables by quickly photographing Jeremy when he emerges from outside shadows to retrieve the underwear. Stephanie then corners Jeremy with her car and continues taking photos as she forces him to humiliate himself.

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Review:

I won’t lie. I didn’t expect much from “The Source of Shadows.” I expected so little in fact that I’m not quite sure how I ended up giving it the time of day at all.

I’ve long been an advocate for short films finding avenues outside of YouTube and film festivals to reach wider audiences who can’t or won’t otherwise encounter such content. Yet I’ve also been routinely unimpressed by low-level distributors slapping together unrelated shorts and releasing a feature-length assembly as some poorly patch-worked “anthology.” I won’t name names, but this tactic caught a little fire for a brief period of time and most movies that tried it turned out to be shot-in-a-backyard rubbish.

Sketchy clues hinted “The Source of Shadows” was another rush job of disparate shorts culled together according to how cheaply they could be acquired, not how good they actually were. For one thing, the film released in 2020, but quick research reveals its ten shorts, which range in length from four to 15 minutes, date back to either 2016 or 2017. For another, the supposed link of being “woven together by one of our most primal fears, the fear of the unknown” sounded like a laughably strained stretch to claim the film was based around a cohesive theme.

The trailer provided additional pause by touting “ten tales of horror from twelve visionary directors.” Now, I don’t purport to be the barometer by which popular awareness of any entity in genre entertainment must be measured. Nevertheless I confess I did arrogantly cock an eyebrow when I looked at the list of these “visionaries” and saw only one name I recognized (Gigi Saul Guerrero).

I didn’t consider how unfair my snicker was until I remembered, shorts aren’t really for established filmmakers. They’re primarily playgrounds for experimentation or showcases for undiscovered talent. “The Source of Shadows” may have come together under “this is what we can get” circumstances of convenience. But after properly repositioning my perspective on how to view its value, I saw the movie not as disposable DTV entertainment from DIY hacks. I saw it as a sincere platform for providing exposure to fledgling filmmakers with legitimate potential to promote.

Since its 11-minute runtime puts it at the longer end of the ten shorts, opening segment “Tethered” offers some of the most material to talk about even though its setup is straightforward. “Tethered” tells the tale of a blind boy living alone in the woods according to rules left behind by his missing mother, the most important of which is to never wander further into the forest than the rope tethering him to his cabin permits.

Although it includes a touch too many establishing shots, “Tethered” benefits from an expansive woodland location that opens up the production. Actor Jared Cook continues letting the piece breathe at its own pace by making the young man interesting to watch without using words.

Something evidenced here that you see often in short horror is that “Tethered” focuses minimally on plot depth because it’s predominantly an exercise in establishing an environment before executing a sinister sting. As that objective goes, “Tethered” qualifies as a success, even if it comes out as a narratively hollow one.

The only comedic bit in the movie, “Inside the House” starts out looking like a cheap riff on the opening shot of John Carpenter’s “Halloween” by having a creep stalk in first-person as a home alone girl dances in Daisy Dukes. The segment seems headed for “yeah, yeah” boredom when it pulls a sudden swerve that made me laugh out loud because I’ve often envisioned something similar happening while prepping dinner. The gag would be more charmingly macabre if it didn’t linger on a pretty poor makeup effect. Still, the unexpected twist makes “Inside the House” memorable.

“Am Berg” is a lot like “Tethered” in that it blows up a balloon with mood so it can pull off a pop at the end. Like many of the movie’s segments, “Am Berg” demonstrates skillful cinematic technique and an eye for design, even if it’s lacking on the resonance front.

“Adrift,” “Don’t Look Into Their Eyes,” and “Bestia” don’t have enough to them to warrant detailed discussion. That’s not to imply they are without merit though. I’ll instead use this space to say two of these segments exemplify one of the film’s best qualities. Comparable projects working with similarly small budgets often just shoot on an iPhone in one white-walled apartment after another. Multiple shorts in “The Source of Shadows” are set outside or in unspecified time periods, and all of them carefully consider camera placement and editing, which become visually arresting boons that keep audience eyes engaged from one piece to the next.

The girl at the center of “Banshee” shows some telltale signs of amateur acting, which isn’t as commonplace as you might think throughout “The Source of Shadows.” The script also strains to force exposition into early dialogue for building backstory the runtime doesn’t have room for. But with a creepy creature and one of the more robust plots, “Banshee” ends up among the best in the movie’s bunch.

“Transient” truly taps into the fear of someone secretly living inside a suburban home as effectively as any feature film has done. It’s an excellent, albeit brief, illustration of a concept capable of keeping almost anyone up at night with worry. Extra points are awarded for putting a public domain film on a TV that isn’t “Night of the Living Dead” for a change.

“Beastly Things” changes things up with five minutes of dialogue-free animation. “Withheld” then finishes the film as strongly as it started by being unsettlingly tense despite consisting almost exclusively of scenes where an unseen stalker terrorizes a woman over the phone. Featuring a gripping anchor performance from Lizzie Mounter and chilling voice work from Tom Bonington, “Withheld” ends “The Source of Shadows” on a high note whose mature moodiness morphs into panicked shocks.

I’ve seen an untold number of sloppy horror anthologies carelessly toss random shorts in a pot and barely bring them to a boil. “The Source of Shadows” isn’t one of them. I’ve also seen an untold number of shorts programs at various festivals and can confirm this is on par with any of those blocks.

As an under-the-radar release in multiple ways, “The Source of Shadows” isn’t going to knock anyone out with unforgettable nightmares. It doesn’t have the substance for that. But for tolerant types curious to taste what some unknown filmmakers, many of whom will remain that way I’m afraid, are up to in the micro-indie horror space, “The Source of Shadows” offers intriguing content to chew on.

Review Score: 75

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