English Review: YUMMY MEAT: A HALLOWEEN CAROL (John Fitzpatrick – 2015)

YUMMY MEAT: A HALLOWEEN CAROL

Original title: Yummy Meat: A Halloween Carol
2015 – U.S.A.
Genre: Short film
Director: John Fitzpatrick
Music: Aaron J. Goldstein
Screenplay: Sean Decker
With Miracle Laurie, Lucas Jaye, Lou Ferrigno Jr. and Luke Albright

Story: Amber, dentist, is alone at home on Halloween’s night, waiting for her husband to come back home. A kid knocks at the door, but he’s asking for something rather different than candies…

It’s always interesting to watch short films. Because it’s a challenge. How to tell a story that fast, to be effective and to entertain. It’s even more difficult when you do a horror short. How to scare people in a few minutes, to give them thrills? To set up an atmosphere. That’s why some are interesting and succeed, and some just fail. And that’s also why anthologies like The ABCs of Death are entertaining but not that good. The best are among some real bad ones. But anyway, today, we’re talking about Yummy Meat: A Halloween Carol, a 5 minutes horror short, part of the Scary Endings, a TV series of 11 shorts made last year. And you guessed right, it’s about Halloween, but no serial killer here, something different. We are with Amber (Miracle Laurie) in her home, it’s Halloween night, and it’s just a regular night. Waiting for the husband, drinking red wine, answering to kids at the door who want candies. Yummy Meat looks professional since its first frame. The cinematography is nice, the direction too, so are the actors. But if it works, it’s thanks to the script (by Sean Decker, who also worked on the film L.A. Slasher, and yeah, I have it and need to see it!) and the little boy Lucas Jaye.

This cute innocent little boy is a great deal, cause he brings weirdness and a creepy atmosphere to the short. Yeah, the short, without saying too much, involves a monster, and when it comes to show it, you know it’s a guy in a suit, and maybe I was wrong, but it worked for me as a tribute to those old monster movies I love. And also, it works because the atmosphere was here from the start. Also for people who loves blood (like me), you have some pretty good gruesome special effect near the end. So if like me, you like blood, atmosphere, monsters, and you like films being shot seriously, you can try that one, it’s definitely a good pick, and it works well only in 5 minutes!