One of the first YouTube channels I both subscribed to and ‘clicked the bell’ for was Crypt TV. Alongside Omeleto (which came shortly after), Crypt TV regularly and proudly pushed incredible, independent, short-form genre content into my feed. And I would always eat it up. For those curious, Crypt TV is still platforming wonderful horror for those cool cats out there who love horror. The latest short film to find a home on their channel is a nifty, slightly absurdist, slightly liminal, (and shot on 35mm!) all-around haunting piece of horror called Housewife. Spoiler alert, it’s worth your time.

A Bloody Accident Sparks the Horror in Housewife

Housewife follows Julia (Shannon Collis), who accidentally cuts her finger while tidying up and bleeds on a long-forgotten dollhouse. Life gets flipped upside down when Julia’s blood becomes one with the dollhouse.

I have covered tons of short films as singular pieces and in blocks. Short films, I’ve always said, are the cornerstone of horror. In a quantitative sense, more creativity has cumulatively shone in short films than in features (that I have seen). Housewife continues that streak. Its premise is simple, but not in a way that feels underwritten. Writer/directors Greta Guthrie and Jake Lazarow’s short film, based on Miranda Parkin’s original character, is as impactful as it is frightening.

A Refreshing and Terrifyingly Original Creature Concept

Post-Bakemono, I was worried that I may have seen it all. At the end of the day, how many original ideas can be left? Parkin’s character is beyond unique; it’s a nightmare I never thought I would have. The idea of a doll house coming to life doesn’t sound scary one bit. Parkin, Guthrie, and Lazarow proved me wrong. Assuming that Housewife is a proof of concept, which, if it’s not, it damn well should be, they have set themselves up for nothing but success.

When it comes to shorts going feature, budgeting must come into play. Many short films create worlds and characters that are too big for the producer types who use short films as potential investments. Housewife’s creature is wildly creative, scary, and great for a low-budget/indie feature. Parkin’s creature checks, as stated earlier, an absurdist and liminal box at the same time, while being easily scalable to a feature-length capacity.

A New Nightmare You Can Watch Now on Crypt TV

Housewife is intriguing, frightening, unique, and all around fun. There’s something special about being introduced to a new fear. And Parkin’s creature has now dug its way deep into my subconscious. The unfortunate thing about short films, usually, is that I can talk about them…but they’re not available to watch. Have no fear, Crypt TV is here! Housewife can be seen over on the Crypt TV YouTube channel so that you, too, can find a new nightmare.

One of the things that irks me most about ‘filmmakers’ using AI is one of the two typical answers they give: “it was low-budget,” or “it was to save time.” Look at the endless number of films made pre-2020 on next to nothing that still managed to be impactful. When I watch that awful Coca-Cola ad, all I can think is, if they care so little about how their product is perceived, do they think it’s a worthwhile product? If you’re a filmmaker and decide to use AI for any reason, generative or NOT, then you are not a filmmaker. A low-budget shlock flick like Mum & Dad has more artistry in a single frame than the entirety of Elon Musk’s gooner creator on Twitter. While I may not have liked Mum & Dad, I can’t help but think of a simpler time when filmmakers cared about the craft and audiences didn’t have to overanalyze every single image just to see if the latest V/H/S film uses generative AI.

But I digress.

Mum & Dad: A Bleak, Brutal British Horror

Mum & Dad follows Lena (Olga Fedori), a young Polish woman working as a janitor at Heathrow airport. Lena quickly makes friends with her coworker Birdie (Ainsley Howard). Birdie, along with her mute brother Elbie (Toby Alexander), offers Lena a ride home from their father after Lena misses her bus. Graciously accepting, Lena joins them on a seemingly normal walk home. That is, until they get there and Lena meets her new Mum (Dido Miles) and Dad (Perry Benson).

When it comes to reviewing films, I usually know exactly what I want to say about them. But I had to sit with this film for about 24 hours before getting my thoughts together. At first, Mum & Dad felt like nothing more than mid-aughts misery porn. The world was hurting, yes, even the UK, and tensions around the globe were flaring. So, I rewatched the film. Yes, it was brutal, intense, and mean. And, to my surprise, less gory than I remembered. How could I have completely misremembered what I had watched not even a day before? Why did I think I sat through an hour and a half of buckets of blood?

Steven Sheil’s Shoestring Filmmaking Packs a Punch in Mum & Dad

Writer/director Steven Sheil’s debut feature film packs quite the punch (pun not intended) and leaves a visceral hole of misremembering. I constantly drone on about how filmmakers who make short films have one of the hardest jobs in film. For some reason, I always seem to forget to include independent filmmakers in that grouping. Sheil does better with a shoestring budget than Damien Leone does with millions. That is telling a brutal story of pain and suffering, full of grotesqueries, with actual meaning. But hey, in his own words, he was just making a “silly clown movie!”

I’m digressing again.

The characters of Mum and Dad are interesting amalgamations of ‘G’reat serial killers, but closely resemble Fred and Rose West. There isn’t much to them, which, to me, makes them even scarier. On the surface, Mum and Dad are normal people, with friends and a life. Dad has a job and is able to separate his personal and professional life. Like a film to follow just one year later, The Loved Ones, the normal nature of the antagonists makes them even more frightening. How many times have you gone to the grocery store, or to the bank, or signed up for home insurance without thinking twice about the worker you’re interacting with? They could easily have a young Polish girl chained up in their basement.

A Simple Story Elevated by Smart Storytelling

Mum & Dad’s story is incredibly simple. Foreign girl gets kidnapped by backwater yokels, gets tortured, then tries to escape. Sheil doesn’t do anything to expand on the story’s simplicity. Where Sheil succeeds is in his insistence on letting the audience put the pieces together. One of the reasons I thought this film was gorier than it actually was lies in its careful, precise visual storytelling. The blocking warps the mind into thinking they saw X happen, when actually, you hear X happening, see the reactions, and get a glimpse of the aftermath. And that’s where my main point from the intro comes into play.

Rather than attempting to step out of the lane of what could be, Sheil understood the film’s financial limits. Like how Bruce malfunctioned so much during the filming of Jaws, and it inadvertently made the film better. You can see the person pretending to be a decapitated head, squirming around under the table when the camera lingers a bit too much. Many of the scenes of violence look hastily rehearsed and shot, which adds a level of authenticity. It’s easy to see how slapdash this film is put together…and that’s why it had such an impact. Because it was made by people who WANTED to make something.

Why Authentic Filmmaking Still Matters

Care and craft go a long way with audiences. Even though the acting was pretty flat, the dialogue feels very first-draft-y, and the decapitated head moves more than a decapitated head usually does, you can feel the craft behind this film. It’s not some prompt written by a right-wing basement dweller who wants to make Greta Thunberg look like a walrus; it’s not three-time loser Jack Ciattarelli making an AI attack ad about Mikie Sherrill. Despite its flaws, Mum & Dad finds a unique way to make you think it’s gnarlier than it actually is, and that’s something you don’t get too much of these days.