Review – Heartland Horrors

It came from Lawrence, Kansas! This collection of short subjects from the Horror Channel showcases what’s right and what’s wrong about the tech-spawned revolution in independent movie-making. On one hand, writers, actors and directors have a lot more freedom to play around with ideas. None of these things would ever have stood alone as a feature-length, must-make-millions-to-turn-a-profit production. But they don’t have to. Each needs to last only long enough to tell a simple tale. On the other hand, the absence of the filter imposed by the studio system means that anything can be produced no matter how stupid or crappy it happens to be. The result – predictably – is a mixed bag of “oh, that’s clever” (such as the “Woman’s Intuition” short), “that made no sense at all” (“Out to Pasture”) and “jeez, that was dumb” (“The Last Laugh”). Overall these were entertaining, and I’m not sorry I rented it. But if there’s a lesson to be learned here, it’s that if one turn of the screw results in a hackneyed cliché, adding a second twist doesn’t necessarily make it better. Mildly amusing