Author: Joel Fisher

Dark Whispers: Volume One is an Australian horror anthology featuring ten short films directed by women. Clara (Andrea Demetriades) comes home to her mother’s house and finds she has inherited a book which she is instructed to read and become the keeper of the book.

While flicking through the pages, Clara soon finds lots of short stories and despite her deepening fear of what she reads, she finds it hard to put it down – especially after trying to destroy the book only means that the book returns, enticing her to read more.

The collection of short horror films is carefully selected so there is bound to be something for every type of horror fan. There are short films from all walks of life, some of which cross more than one plain of existence. There are more conventional horror films set to thrill because of the things we all recognise and yet there are short films for the more discerning horror fan who likes their stories to be a bit more artistic and open to interpretation.

Dark Whispers: Volume One has a wide variety of films that shows exactly what horror can do for all people and shows the range that it can reach and the stories it can tell.

From the old and the young, the everyday to the more supernatural, Dark Whispers has it all covered and may even open up new styles in the horror genre that may catch the interest of those who have never seen anything like it before. Everybody will recognise something in the short films within the evil book that Clara is forced to read and will delight in the stories about the monsters from beyond and the monsters that lie within ourselves. However, what really sets this horror anthology apart is what pulls it all together.

So many horror anthologies have some kind of framing device where a person or group of people sit down telling stories or simply read from a book while a camera fades in and out to the next story. What makes Dark Whispers: Volume One so clever though is that Clara’s experiences involve her in the stories that she reads. As fiction starts to seep into reality the audience may start to be as intrigued about what is going to happen to Clara as to what’s going to happen to the people in the stories she reads.

So, even if the audience may not find themselves interested in all the stories it tells, they may want to stick around to see what happens to Clara. Dark Whispers: Volume One is a great anthology that shows what great talent there is in filmmaking, I just can’t wait for Volume Two.

John is a reformed man who has just got out of prison after serving time for a serious crime. John is an old man now and looks like any other kindly man you may find waiting for public transport, so at a train station is where the story finds him.

He’s minding his own business when he picks up a small child’s toy and suddenly, deeply buried memories start flooding back of his own childhood and what may have led him to do the terrible thing that put him in prison. However, John is conflicted. He knows that he has served time for what he did and he feels like a changed man now, but the re-emergence of John’s memories suggest that maybe John’s true nature is hidden, just waiting to emerge.

Written and directed by Samantha Timms, Reformed manages to fit in a lot of story of about a man looking back to when he was growing up. There is a lot of subtext about how being old can be bittersweet as John looks back at his past and finds regrets, fears and longings that remind him that he’s still human but overlooked because of his age.

Told in snippets of flashbacks, Timms shows John’s early life mixed with a little nostalgia and dark reality as the audience is shown how John grew up and how he got to where he is now.

However, there is also the more abstract and supernatural nature to John’s urges and what makes him question whether he has really changed at all – even though he does his best to resist. This also brings up questions of nature versus nurture and whether anybody can truly be reformed if their behaviour is viewed as irredeemable.

Reformed is a unique idea that turns things on their heads as far as how we consider the elderly in so many different ways. Most of us see old people waiting for a train, going to the shops or maybe just walking in the street and we may never think twice about them.

We forget that everybody has had a past, everybody has grown up in different circumstances and there may be things that people have done that we would consider unspeakable. In short, be wary of your elders.

Torching the Dusties is a short film written and directed by Marlene Goldman and Phillip McKee, based on the short story of the same name written by Margaret Atwood. Frank (Eric Peterson) and Wilma (Clare Coulter) live in a retirement home called Ambrosia Manor.

Frank has been told that he’s losing his eyesight and can expect to see things that aren’t really there, although he is told that he will know what is real and what isn’t.

Then one day Wilma tells Frank that there are protestors outside wearing masks of happy, chubby babies and they are protesting about the retirement home – or more precisely the residents of Ambrosia Manor and it’s simply because they are old. Over the next few days, Wilma and Frank hear of the increasing protests and the traction that is being gained on what could affect their lives so they decide to do something about it, even if it means leaving Ambrosia Manor for good.

In recent years, there have been many political and economic issues that have divided people all over the world. There have been rising house prices, unemployment figures have fluctuated and a divide has even risen (perhaps more now than ever) about the rights of immigrants and what effect they have on the countries they live in which is not their birthplace.

There’s also an argument about who’s to blame for the state the world is in right now and who should be held responsible.

The world is ever changing and with change comes progress and for those with the talent and determination then they make the world work for them, but for others they see a hopeless situation that is increasingly getting out of their control and an unfortunate side effect of this is that they want to find people to blame.

https://vimeo.com/340513859

It seems that on the one hand there are the older generation who are seen as racist and intolerant, but on the other hand there is the younger generation who see the older people as the cause for their problems because they have not been properly prepared for the world.

Their parents grew up in a different time and are perhaps not properly equipped to advise based on their own experiences, coupling that with the way the world seems to be going and there seems to be only one logical explanation. Blame the old people.

Torching the Dusties is simply done, beautifully shot and highlights what seems to be a not too far-fetched future where if we don’t all calm down and listen to each other, then one day something may happen that we can’t take back and pretend that it didn’t happen.

Snowflakes is a short film written and directed by Faye Jackson. Esther (Sharon Duncan-Brewster) and Miriam (Cherrelle Skeete) are two women who are being forcibly deported to Jamaica, Esther is resisting harder than Miriam because she has been in the UK for forty years and so is clearly distressed as it seems that none of the officials from the government care.

Miriam on the other hand is taking it more calmly although she is clearly not one to keep quiet and play along. Esther’s distress is met with contempt and apathy from the officials who are treating the people at the deportation centre like cattle. That is until something unexpected and miraculous happens that sees Esther and Miriam given a chance at freedom.

Although up until a point, the events that happen in Snowflakes could easily happen in any deportation centre throughout the UK (maybe even more so considering recent events), Snowflakes doesn’t want to hammer home its message to tell its audience that what is happening is wrong. Anybody with half a heart would see that the way these women (particularly Esther) are treated is an abuse of power and against human rights.

What Faye Jackson wants to show is that there are consequences to actions that may not be deemed illegal, but are unequivocally wrong and she uses humour in order to get her point across. Both Duncan-Brewster and Skeete play their parts well, the latter with great humour and the former putting the audience on edge and making them really feel for her situation as it gets more traumatic.

However, the twist is what really makes it stand out and through a few lines of dialogue, Jackson tells the audience exactly what need to know about what’s happening and is able to make the audience think about the real message behind the comedy. The score also manages to keep things light and bouncy for what could have been a story dealt with in a very different way.

Snowflakes never preaches to its audience but instead makes them look themselves in the mirror and forces them to ask themselves if they can really live with the consequences of their actions, no matter how small.