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Canneseries 'Deadhouse Dark' Review: A Horror Anthology Series That'll Shake You Up In 15 Minutes

'Deadhouse Dark' is written and directed by Enzo Tedeschi, Rachele Wiggins, Rosie Lourde, Denai Gracie, Megan Riakos, and Joshua Long.

Disclaimer: This review of Deadhouse Dark is based on the 2 episodes that were screened at the Cannes International Series Festival.

Horror is pretty tough to pull-off in a feature-length film or a TV show. If the directors, writers, or showrunners don’t know what they’re doing and whether they should engage their audience via jump-scares or tense sequences, they might end up cheapening the product. Because the genre functions on that theory that the audience’s ability to get spooked is like an elastic band. If you stretch it too often, it’ll snap quickly, and the pay-off will be hampered. You’ve to keep stretching it steadily until it snaps to generate the necessary reaction. And it usually seems that a short story is the best way to emulate that theory without testing the audience’s patience too much. But that’s even tougher because you’ve to establish the story, the supernatural element (If there’s one), and have a more or less conclusive end. Well, Deadhouse Dark does all that without breaking a sweat.

The Australian short-form series is written and directed by Enzo Tedeschi, Rachele Wiggins, Rosie Lourde, Denai Gracie, Megan Riakos, and Joshua Long. The cinematography is by Christopher Bland, the editing by Dan Berghofer, and the score by Caitlin Yeo. The cast features Nicholas Hope, Barbara Bingham, Lauren Orrell, Naomi Sequeira, Eliza Nicholls. The official synopsis for the series states that it is a “boxful of dark and chilling tales of terror inspired by frighteningly familiar modern trends including dark web mystery boxes, dashcam footage, and Insta-fame-hungry vloggers”. In the first two episodes, we get to see the stories of two girls who come across a car crash while returning from a Halloween-themed party all the while arguing about leaving the country for good and that of a woman trapped in her house with a box of mirrors and probably a mysterious entity lurking in the shadows.

I think the hand-held found-footage horror sub-genre has been done to death. But I think that the dash-cam found-footage part of it is yet to be explored fully. I did a cursory search of movies that have explored and I found three examples that are poor additions to the genre or one that’s not attempting to be horror in any way. So, in that sense, DASHCAM_013_20191031.MP4 is the one that has not only told a cohesive story through the dash-cam but also managed to scare the fu*king shit out of me. There’s something so claustrophobic and anxiety-inducing about being strapped to the front of a car while horrific shit unfolds before you. It takes away whatever illusion of agency that comes from traditionally-shot films. There’s not a lot of on-camera acting. It’s all voice-acting and that’s done pretty well. I think that the editing could’ve been subtle because you know that every time the camera glitches, there’s a cut. Sometimes it works. But the rest of the time, it’s distracting. That said, all in all, I felt that it was a great return to the aforementioned sub-genre of horror.

The second story, Mystery Box, is comparatively more traditional. We meet Sophie hyperventilating in a massive mansion while the sound of an alarm is going off somewhere in the distance. She calls her mother, asking her to come back as soon as possible because she doesn’t like to be left alone in the house. Then it’s revealed that she might be a tad-bit agoraphobic when she rushes to get a parcel that’s left in front of her door, which is where the sound of the alarm is coming from. After she opens the box, it starts to become a little apparent that something is off. However, I think that Sophie’s costume design was the first thing that indicated that something was off because she was too dolled up for someone who doesn’t go out and hence the pay-off, which I won’t reveal, was all the more satisfying. Since I saw it right after the Dash Cam episode, I noticed the series’ throughline, which is an analysis of the cyclical nature of our lives and how we are stuck due to our habits and misunderstandings. And I always laud any horror IP that observes (Or at least tries to observe) these personal issues through the lens of the supernatural.

Final verdict.

I liked Deadhouse Dark. It reminded me of the Tim Miller led anthology series Love, Death, and Robots. The stories are short, sweet, intriguing, and will definitely make you or come close to making you sh*t your pants. On top of that, there’s a good over-arching narrative that ties all these stories together and makes you think about who is pulling the proverbial strings. I think Indian filmmakers who have suddenly developed a love for short stories should take notes from Deadhouse Dark, in case they want to dip their toes into the genre. And I think Deadhouse Films should keep extending this series until the end of time so that I can get my daily fix of horror.

SEE ALSO: Canneseries Moloch Review - A Slow-Burn French Mystery About People Spontaneously Catching Fire

Cover image courtesy: Canneseries/YouTube

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