Here's a recommendation: a new horror/sci-fi web series created by Scott Klein, titled Haywire. As of today, there are two episodes up, and a helpful timer on the website displays the countdown to Episode 3: fourteen days, nine hours, as I'm writing this. The series has gotten some attention lately, after being praised by Indie Intertube and SciFiPulse.net, and for good reason: the show crams a lot of intensity and drama into its five-minute run time. They've clearly got a very small budget to work with, but that doesn't stop the filmmakers from delivery a quality program.
Each episode opens with a comic-book-style intro that relates the story's basic setup--a bright light erupts in a small NY town, shutting down all electronics, and affecting those who saw its flash in a peculiar way: it sends their brains into a scrambled loop, and they are only able to continue endlessly doing whatever they were doing when the light hit.
Episode 1,"The Gardener," has a house full of trapped people nervously watching their neighbor, outside, working in her garden. When one of their friends approaches the woman, she attacks him, repeatedly shouting for him to get off her lawn.
The subject of the second episode, "The Beaten Path," concerns a jogger who is stuck repeatedly wishing everyone he meets a nice day. Unfortunately for him, he meets some rather nasty folks who are too wary of the new zombie people to return his greeting.
I say "zombie," but really, these guys wouldn't fit under the traditional meaning of that word. For one thing, they aren't dead (or undead), and they don't crave flesh. Still, for me, it falls under the horror sub-category that the George Romero films and 28 Days Later occupy. These sad, confused, braindead people, stomping through the only activity they know--if they aren't zombies, I don't know what the hell they are.
Check this show out if you have a moment. It's a quick download, a
nd is worth watching. I'm curious to see where the series goes, if later episodes will back to these first two seemingly separate stories, or if a new story will appear with each show. It's quality short filmmaking either way.http://haywireseries.com/
(All artwork and photos are taken from the Haywire website.)
Posts
