SHADOW
FALLS

		Review by E.C.McMullen Jr.
SHOULD YOU? TIP JAR SHADOW FALLS - 2005 Gunn Park Entertainment / Horror Channel Rating: N/A

Back in the 1990s, I started a career as a stand-up comic. I started at the same club as comics like Pablo Francisco and Joey Medina. During the early days, I made the same mistakes a lot of open mike comics make. If you hear any laughter at all, you think you're doing good. If you get the audience to all laugh at the same time, you think you're doing great.

But you aren't. And in stand-up comedy, the ones who are really looking out for you are the ones who tell you how much you suck and why. They tell you what worked and what didn't. In the world of comedy, the comics who most want to stick a knife in your back (for no other reason than to thin out the competition) are the ones who, after you come off the stage from a mediocre set, will tell you how great you were. "Oh you rocked dude! It's just this audience! This isn't a great crowd, but that's not your fault." Possibly the most pathetic thing you can ever hear a comic say, and sometimes even an experienced headliner will say this, is:

"Fuck you, that's funny."

Maybe the joke was funny, but the comic who told it, wasn't. A comic saying "Fuck you, that's funny," is the verbal equivalent of bleeding from a gunshot wound: Yer dead, dude!

Successful headliner comics like Tommy Blaze and Matt Weinhold, after seeing my act, would tell me (along with a couple of other noob comics who were ready to listen) that we should videotape ourselves doing our act. See what the audience sees when you are onstage. Was your face and body expressions saying what your mouth were saying? If not, do your act in front of a mirror. If you don't like doing that, then keep on doing it until it looks right: until you like it.

The same thing happens in entertainment everywhere.

It's why the best encouragement to an actor about to go onstage is, "Break a leg." Models encourage each other with "I hate you." Singers say, "You suck!"

Let your friends tell you how great you were. Let your agent tell you how great you were. Your friends probably mean it and your agent needs to keep your morale up. When you come off a set where you know for a fact that you didn't get a standing ovation and a round of applause and cheers and your peers are telling you how great you were, ESPECIALLY if they are blaming the crowd instead of you, you are among your enemies. And your enemies want to grow and thrive out of your fertile remains.

2003 through 2004, a group of friends made a series of short films that all revolved around a place called SHADOW FALLS. Not to be confused by the 2006 online radio show of the same name and concept, SHADOW FALLS is, as far as I can tell, the first and original idea and stories by Kendall Sinn. Kendall is the writer / director / producer / cinematographer / editor / etc. of the shorts. Sally Cummings, his partner, handles production / costumes / set design / etc.

SHADOW FALLS is a series of vignettes, each one telling a different tale of someone who met some kind of fate at a mysterious place called SHADOW FALLS.

It begins with Jabberwocky. This is barely written at all since it chiefly consists of a butchered retelling of the poem by Lewis Carrol and a series of clips from all the movies thrown out in a haphazard spray. The short acts more like a trailer than anything coherent. The acting from the two actors further detracts from what little there is, although the camera work and cinematography are well done. A mood is created here but nothing is done with it.

Next is Dead To Me. While the scenes are well done and interesting, the actual story, again, lacks: ending right at the moment where it should be taking off.

And this is how it is through the rest of the series. Very interesting visuals and an interesting set up. But the thing is, they are nearly all set ups or break downs. Something comes after, or SHOULD come after most of these shorts.

In a few of them, it feels like I am watching the ending of a movie and I wonder what I missed. All of them are woefully incomplete. A few of them have characters that serve no purpose. The Man From Lod begins and ends with a shirtless muscular guy holding a sword. He walks up to a car and looks at the camera. In the next scene, we see the very short story of the car.

Then we see the Lod man walk over to a grave and plunge the sword into it. Now you or I could make up any story we like about what the Man From Lod did. Maybe he was killing the undead body of a monster. Maybe he was putting the victims to a final rest. Maybe he IS the killer. Maybe a lot of things. It's easy to use your own imagination, but if you have to write most of the story in your head, then the film maker didn't put enough of the story on the screen. I don't need to watch a movie to help me think, I can do that on my own quite nicely, thanks.

The only real dud in SHADOW FALLS is The Funny Scream of Nurse Karen. This bit could have been saved if her scream was actually funny. Instead we get a scene of a guy who has a nurse tied up. While she cries and moans, he tells her what he has done to others and what he is going to do to her. He explains himself in such a way that makes you realize why about 99.99% of all criminals are morons and dull as mold. The bit ends where he does exactly what he said he'd do - minus any gory scenes. Imagine a comic telling you the punch line to his joke first. Then telling you the setup, then delivering the punch line as promised. There is nothing we know about the victim to make us care and there is nothing about the killer that's interesting. SNORE! This is why so few movies are made about serial killers and even fewer that actually work.

The crime of Wisconsin psychopath*, Ed Gein inspired many movies including PSYCHO, THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, and THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS. Yet none of these movies actually portrayed the real Ed Gein, who was a sad, pathetic, and ultimately boring person.

He wasn't a powerful and unstoppable killing machine, and he wasn't brilliant but insane like Hannibal Lector. Ed was stupid, delusional, emotionally damaged, weak and sneaky and merely had a knife at the right time and in the right place (for him). The few movies that have tried to actually tell Ed's actual story flopped simply because the mind and motivations of real life serial killers are so damn mediocre. The best serial killer movies created fictional serial killers with intriguing lives, thoughts and actions, (I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE, SAW) things that almost never exist in real life. When Eli Roth made HOSTEL, he didn't focus on the killers: he portrayed them, historically, as they really are: dullg and stupid. Eli focused on the victims and how they survived or met their doom - and most importantly, how they thought their way out of their problem.

Now you can believe that I get sent a LOT of noob stuff. And one thing nearly all of them have in common is how great the makers think they are. Yet their films are not simply crap, but self-indulgent crap. Poorly edited, poorly lit, and too much time allowing a person who can't act, ham up the screen. I don't review most of them because these folks are just starting out and I won't trash noobs. And if you think that's dishonest of me, then screw yourself, go somewhere else!

And yet SHADOW FALLS works for me in an odd way. What makes it work is the idea behind it: A ghost town where various people from the outside world are drawn to meet their fate or doom. Yes, such towns have been described long before video games like SILENT HILL or RESIDENT EVIL. Long before, in fact, movies like CARNIVAL OF SOULS. Yet like Werewolves, zombies, and other monsters, there is plenty of depth there to explore. Watching SHADOW FALLS I felt like I was watching the early home movies of the next Steven Spielberg, Robert Rodriguez or Quentin Tarantino. Kendall made sure that his scenes were lit enough for me to visually understand them. The sound was clean enough for me to hear what was going on. The sets were cheap but they readily conveyed the tone Sally and Kendall wanted to set. The actors were fair to awful but Kendall didn't dwell on them: his cuts were quick and clean and moved the vignette forward. Sally's special effects were much better than one should expect on their budget.

All of these vignettes are available for free online and can be found at The Horror Channel. You have to register for their service, but it's free. One of the best things about the films is that they come with a forum so that after you watch one, you can read what Kendall thinks about it. Kendall is refreshingly up front with his ideas and where he was going with each one. He readily admits to using a cliché sometimes and which of his shorts he feels turned out better than others. As his movies bear out, this is a guy who knows what he wants and where he is going, and these movies are his exploration of the medium - providing him the learning experience of getting there.

Though these shorts don't deserve a high score, they are still the fascinating seeds of a Horror director in the raw. If you love Horror movies, you probably have no better chance to interact with a noob director than by getting on the forum. Be the audience he needs. Tell him what worked for you, what didn't. One day when he makes that truly great film that knocks us all on our ass, you can say you knew his work when...

Two Shriek Girls.

This review copyright 2007 E.C.McMullen Jr.

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