Horror Shorts Review: Love Sick (2006) and Dinner for Two (2008)
Poster for Love Sick
I’ve recently had the chance to watch two really well-made horror shorts. The first is 2006’s Love Sick written by Calvin Field and directed by Will & Valerie Wittstruck. The other is 2008’s Dinner for Two written and directed by Henry Hubbard. I chose to review them together since they both share a very similar theme: Girls tied to chairs being threatened by some crazy fuck.
I’ll start with Love Sick. Love Sick is a 9min 59sec exploration of an ended relationship. It’s about the human need for closure and looking back at the relationship wondering if you did indeed give it 100%. The film was shot in a single 17 hour shoot during the summer of 2006. The directors shot this on one of their days off from filming another horror short, Stolen Moments. The plot is pretty simple: Paul (Evan Tucker) is still very upset about his girlfriend, Michelle (Melinda Ausserer), leaving him with no explanation or reason. Not being able to take it anymore he kidnaps her, ties her to a chair, and is determined to get to the truth of why she left him.
This one is pretty fun in that it doesn’t go down the obvious path. Nowadays ya see a girl tied up in a chair in a dark and dirty basement ya think, “Here comes another torture-porn flick.” But this one shakes up the formula in a satisfying way. The Wittstrucks’ convey the mental states of the two characters nicely through the use of lighting and shadows. Michelle is in the light the entire time and is content with her decision on leaving Paul. With Paul, on the other hand, we barely get to get his face as he hides in the shadows. The darkness that encompasses him is definitely a reflection of what’s going on inside his head as he can’t stand not knowing what happened to his “perfect relationship” (well perfect in his mind anyway).
Will Wittstruck setting up the close up of actress Ausserer in "Love Sick"
The dialogue is realistic and it moves along at a nice pace. There were times when actress Ausserer overacted a bit and sometimes her “tears” looked like makeup painted onto her face. The gore is also more implied than seen (as it’s done off screen), but overall this is a fun little short. Love Sick is distributed by 4D4Films and I encourage you to seek it out. If interested you can find it on their website: http://www.4d4films.com/index.php
The other short, Dinner for Two, has a similar set up: A girl is tied to a chair and is being threatened by a sicko. But unlike Love Sick, the guy here has every intention of harming her.
I came across this short (its run time is 6 minutes) on the Joblo.com web site. They started a new column there called “Your Horror Vids” to give exposure to and feature horror shorts, music vids, parodies, and whatever else made by everyday people. As they say on the website, “The idea is that we want to give amateur filmmakers further exposure.” Sounds like a pretty cool fucking idea to me. And if Dinner for Two is the quality of submissions then I, for one, will be visiting the site often to check out other shorts.
Yeah; that's not good to see when ya jus dumped a guy!! (from "Love Sick")
Of course Dinner for Two isn’t a slick, “big budget” short. It takes place pretty much in one room and, like Love Sick, has two actors. “The Guy,” Zachary Memos, is a serial killer who kidnaps “The Girl,” Christianna White, ties her to a chair, and is preparing to kill her for dinner. Again we get good dialogue and it moves along at a great pace. What we think is going down an obvious path gives us a nice (if not obvious) twist and goes in a different direction. This is a fun little short in the “worm turns” vein. You can see the short here.
I really enjoy well done horror shorts. When done right they give you a nice little “horror fix”. I recommend both Love Sick and Dinner for Two. And as always I encourage you to support indie horror filmmakers!!
My Summary:
Love Sick:
Directors: The Wittstrucks
Plot: 3 out of 5 stars
Gore: 2 out of 10 skulls
Zombie Mayhem: 0 out of 5 brains
Dinner for Two:
Director: Henry Hubbard
Plot: 3 out of 5 stars
Gore: 2 out of 10 skulls
Zombie Mayhem: 0 out of 5 brains
Reviewed by Scott Shoyer
Thank you so much for the positive review. Feedback like this is always encouraging. “Dinner for Two” was originally made for Chiller TV’s 2008 “Dare 2 Direct” short film contest, where submissions were due by the end of July, and then the winners were announced on Halloween night (we didn’t win). I didn’t find out about the competition until very late (mid-July), so I very quickly came up with the story, wrote the script, then grabbed a couple actors and the director from “The Gainesville Ripper”, an indie feature I worked as a crew member on, to help me make it. Like “Love Sick”, we shot the entire thing in one night, then spent one crazy week editing to make the contest’s submission deadline… a deadline we just barely made. The biggest challenge was cutting it down to six minutes (contest rules), since the first presentable cut was closer to ten minutes. I would’ve liked more time to edit, but overall, I’m quite happy with the end result. Again, thanks for giving it a watch and sharing your thoughts.
Henry Hubbard
Writer/Director- Dinner for Two
That’s commendable you were able to write, cast, shoot, and edit the film in that length of time!! Nice job!! Please keep me updated with any current or future projects!!