Honourable Mention: Door to Door (Director’s Cut)

Sometimes I find myself in a quandary as to whether something should go down the review line or the honourable mention line. If it is a film then, if it is online for free, I tend to go down the honourable mention line, but then it is indexed separately on the blog and can be missed by visitors.

As a result, I think I may well merge the index of honourable mentions and successful “Vamp or Not?”s in with the standard indexes. However, ultimately with the blog re-jig in mind, I decided that this 2011 short film by Chris Zdyrski should have an honourable mention as it is available for free viewing over on vimeo (at time of posting).

The film starts with a Grandma (Ruth Bowen) tucking a young boy (Jarod Bowen) in at night. He asks for a story, a scary one. She obliges and says that the story is scary because it is true. The story starts off innocently enough – indeed for those who have seen the Princess Bride, it may have been enough to illicit concerned commentary from a young boy. It was a story of a beautiful girl (Jennifer Wonder) who liked to walk in the sun.

Jennifer Wonder as the girl

The story turns darker as the grandma says that the girl was cursed, as the girl was a vampire. This did illicit response as the boy suggests vampires cannot walk around in the sun. The Grandma tells him that this bit of vampire lore is untrue – after all vampires would want to disguise their weaknesses and a little bit of falsehood can obfuscate the truth. Vampires, she explains, try to hide their kills but the girl hunted in daylight and was often careless – she had never been taught, having been turned against her will and then left by the one who made her.

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The grandma explains that she would go door to door and always managed to get invited in to houses, but would have to move on soon enough. After decades she vanished but the last place she was seen was their very neighbourhood. Of course you know there has to be a payoff here but I shan’t spoil it. The pace is languid, which suits it, replicating that hazy moment when bedside stories are told. The very short nature of the piece means that more is left unanswered than explained.

At the time of posting there was no IMDb page.