Alistair is the second film by Aaron Cartwright; his first film being a piece of The Nightmare Collection Volume 1, which was moderately successful in 2004. This time around, Mr. Cartwright is sticking with the horror film genre, but he is on his own as soul director, writer, and as a producer and actor. Alistair will screened at the Frightfest International Short Film Showcase in Leicester Square, England. So, it can’t be all that bad, can it? Well…
Alistair follows a middle-aged couple who go around killing people in their beds at night for fun. Now that’s bonding, huh? On their latest hunt, they end up at some sort of manor that they picked at random. What appears to be a routine hack’n’slash turns out to be much more than they bargained for. Something evil is lurking in the house, and it’s not alone…and it needs to be fed.
Adam Morgan and Holly Myers play the couple in the film and star in Alistair alongside Melissa Virgara and Kialea Nadine Williams. The first pair have actual acting credits, while the second pair doesn’t have any. However, no one from the cast stands out in terms of acting ability and the film wasn’t long enough for me to sympathize with either group. The film was just under ten minutes long and that’s with the credits. This is a micro-short film.
At times the audio with too low or echo-ey; this can be improved on in the future. The only shocking and scary part in the film was when a doll pops out of no where. It’s only scary because the way it was produced is like those videos you see on youtube that contain a beautiful sunset, and then the girl from The Grudge pops out of no where while screaming. They used this “pop up scare video” several times and it got really annoying. It was also a poor attempt at creative editing or resourceful film making.
Being that it was only ten minutes long, Alistair raised more questions than it solved. The script was good. The quality of film making as a whole was just barely ok. The acting was also ok. I know this was an indie film and I know it was a short film at that, so I’ll give it a C for effort. I know Alistair is doing quite well in the film festival circuit, I just don’t have any idea why…
