Director – Eric Albert Branstrom (Instant Life, At the End of the Hall)
Starring – Christopher Prentice (Butterfly, Break a Leg), Belle Eclair (Sex-Positive, Nobody Fucking Leaves), and Dawn Michel Killing (Dispatches from Elsewhere, Tattletale)
Release Date – 2025
Rating – 3.5/5
I love how broad horror can be. You can have a serious film about a serial killer and immediately follow that up with a movie about a living placenta. Horror is a genre of imagination and creativity or it can be a genre of stale cliches from producers wanting to make a quick dollar. Sometime back I was asked to review the short Paula Takes the Stage. I agreed to check it out and was not prepared for how much fun it was.
**Spoiler Alert** The film follows stage actress Paula (Eclair) who is set to make her big return. However, as she counts down the minutes for her return, madness takes over and blood starts to flow. **Spoiler Alert**
Paula Takes the Stage is a short that really impressed me. It’s not a film that will really stick with you or will inspire a flood of cheap knockoffs but I seriously enjoyed it for what it was. It’s not perfect, but it was entertaining.
The acting in this one is the highlight of the film. The entire cast is phenomenal and the characters they brought to life are absolutely brilliant. The way everyone is able to feed off each other and create these larger than life characters is something truly remarkable. This short has to be seen for the acting alone.
The story for this one is a little underwhelming but works for the film’s short run time. We have a woman preparing for her return to the stage who meets with some cast and crew before her call time. During these interactions things take a deadly turn with severe harm and even death. The short doesn’t really explore the why for this but it works as it is.
Finally, we get a lot of blood. We have some make-up effects that works for the gag and a lot of blood but nothing that would really stand out especially to those of us that have an eye for blood and gore. Overall, Paula Takes the Stage is a short where the acting surpasses all expectations. While the story is lacking, it was still a fantastic short that many genre fans will appreciate. Check it out.
