Hush...

There have been a series of low budget British indie horror flicks coming out in recent years, some very much on the indie end (such as the grim Mum & Dad - made for £100,000) and others on the bigger end of the spectrum (such as Jake West's first big calling card - Doghouse - which followed on from his other, more indie projects such as the rather enjoyable Evil Aliens).

Somewhere in the middle and here we are with Hush - a road-horror-movie in the tradition of The Hitcher or Road Games, but taking place at night on and around the rain-soaked M1 motorway and its various service stations along the way.

While the opening ten minutes that introduce you to the lead characters and their faltering relationship can at times feel a bit clunky in the dialogue and delivery side of things, the atmosphere makes up for it. A near-empty motorway, a car meandering its way through the lashing rain, and a sinister-but-average-looking lorry up ahead.

Considering the indie budget, the atmosphere afforded through the crew's dedication (lots of consecutive night shoots, a lot of rain to be manufactured) really helps spur the film along - especially when the plot takes a more sinister turn when leading man Zakes catches a brief glimpse of a naked and caged girl in the back of the aforementioned lorry.

From this point on, and with the relationship establishing stuff gotten out of the way, the film really gets into its groove and becomes quite an effective low-fi cat & mouse chase flick. Pleasingly there are a few little twists dotted throughout that really keep you guessing, and on the back foot throughout most of the flick. All-too-easily this movie could have ended up as entirely predictable, but these few turns - as well as the previously adored atmosphere - manage to keep the plot fresh enough to keep you going through the not-too-short-not-too-long running time.

There are a couple of obvious moments, where you can see what's going to happen from a mile off, but it's still bloody good fun regardless.

I wasn't necessarily expecting great things from Hush, so I was pleasantly surprised to find more than I was hoping to. A very solid debut from Tonderai, and a really enjoyable British indie, which - on a final note - has further inspired me, as a fellow filmmaker looking for a way to get my boot wedged in the door.

A new script on the go...

Remember that "horror script" I was on about doing before I ended up writing "The End"?

Well, I finally started it last night - again, like with "The End", starting it is always a slow process, and you find yourself not writing that much on the first session, but still - two pages done and the opening scene is there in it's first version.

It's called "From The Inside Out", and it's designed to be a low budget horror - i.e. it could be filmed on a low budget (although a budge that, to me, is high budget). Perhaps a budget in the realms of somewhere between Mum & Dad, and Hush.

Then perhaps I'll go back to my "graduate comedy" script "Generation Procrastination" and go through all the dialogue again (it's a dialogue heavy piece) to punch it all up now that it's about 18 months since I wrote it.

But first though - do "From The Inside Out".

Mum & Dad...

Low budget Brit-horror, the British Texas Chainsaw Massacre as those behind the flick tout it, and you can see why. A ram-shackle band of a 'family' inflicting untold horrors upon their captives, while the filmmakers completely shred the rosy image the vast majority of the viewing public have when "family" springs to mind ... or indeed "Mum & Dad" ... which is quite possibly at the heart of why this flick fucks with your head.

Just saying the title immediately sparks your brain into thinking that you're on about your own parents, when in fact you're talking about the fictional "Mum & Dad" in this "micro budget" horror (the words of Microwave, one the groups behind it, not me - £100,000 to me is a shedload of cash).

Anyway - fucked up this movie most definitely is, and it's not always from what you see - it's often what you see suggests. At the peak of this mountain of creep-inducing familial slaying is 'what' is upstairs ... when you think beyond what you're simply seeing in those moments, and a bit deeper (as the result of a few words), you can't help but screw yourself up into a ball making a variety of disturbed and/or disgusted noises.

It's low budget, it has a story, it sits amidst a group of horror movie peers which have always sat high above the rest of the genre - and indeed the many of today's offerings. Hostel as a franchise was never that good (I maintain that the two movies could have been merged into one script, and that that on film would have been worthwhile) ... and SAW, as a franchise, farted out like a released baloon when #4 came along (#1 and #3 good, #2 meh, #4 shite, #5 I haven't even seen yet).

It doesn't hang around either at a slim 85 minutes, but it's a must-see for proper horror fans seeking something much more than another trap-obsessed torture film with either little to say, or such a preposterously convoluted plot you just can't be arsed.

And for those who saw High Tension (aka Switchblade Romance) and thought it was messed up when the dude shags that severed head ... well, take that general idea ... and just make it more disturbed. Yep, that's one of the multitude of reasons why "Mum & Dad" is highly recommended to all horror-heads.