Honourable Mention: Scare Me

Not to be confused with the horror portmanteau film also called Scare Me from the same year, this is sort of a portmanteau film starring, written and directed by Josh Ruben. I say “sort of” because it involves the characters telling stories and acting them out, rather than moving to filmed segments that represent the stories being told. On the director & cinematographer commentary it is described as they “shot a play with sound design” and I think that is as good a description as any. Whilst that might sound odd, it is the sort of idea that relies on an excellent cast and, in that respect, the cast did a stellar job.

Fanny and Fred meet

Fred (Josh Ruben), newly estranged from his wife, has taken a break from his job in an advertising firm and has headed to the Catskills Mountain to follow his dream of being an author and write a werewolf novel. Jogging the first morning he meets Fanny (Aya Cash) who is also renting a cabin to write… but she is the bestselling author of zombie novel Venus (in which the zombie outbreak effects women). Fred is clearly a little jealous.

trying to scare Fanny

That night there is a power outage and Fanny appears at his cabin. Now, suffice it to say that both characters are flawed. Aya Cash has described Fanny as narcissistic, and Fred has definite issues, plus his emerging insecurity as he feels that his manhood is threatened. Nevertheless, they start to tell each other scary stories – the genius of the film being that they are simply telling them but moments are added in where we, for instance, might see a werewolf’s hand or, at one point, get sirens and lights. Eventually pizza is ordered and this is delivered by Carlo (Chris Redd).

vampire/zombie attack

So, for the reason for an honourable mention here. Fred has heard of Fanny but not read Venus, Carlo, however, is a big fan. So, drugs having been taken, Fanny and Carlo act out Venus. It is whistle-stop (apparently much more was shot but the editorial decision was to make this particular telling breakneck) but at the end the mom of the story turns and Fanny appears from behind the couch with fangs attacking Carlo’s character. Fred is nonplussed – not getting why the mom would suddenly be some sort of zombie vampire. Fanny corrects him by saying that she didn’t use those terms explicitly…

fangs

And that’s it, a blink and you’ll miss it moment of a character in a film acting as a character in a book who is a vampire (or a zompire perhaps). The film, however, is great fun as a whole and this is driven by the three primary actors who are all excellent. The Blu-Ray release has the commentary I mentioned, mini-interviews with Josh Ruben and Aya Cash, a behind the scenes gallery and an outtake reel, a podcast episode and a music video of a musical number from the film… did I mention that they have a musical moment? Worthwhile and proving you don’t need a whole bunch of fancy effects and gore to make an excellent genre piece.

The imdb page is here.

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon US

On Blu-Ray @ Amazon UK