I run a monthly short film night in Brighton called MovieBar. Last night was a horror-themed special in honour of Halloween. It went really well, loads of people came along, we crammed in around 15 films all of which were really good and I had a great time, as seen here...
But there was another reason for inviting a large number of Brightonians to the Caroline of Brunswick last night; an ulterior motive if you will. You see, every month I advertise online for submissions, or I'll see something I really like online and get in touch with the filmmakers. But there was one film we screened lat night that didn't come via the usual channels.
It arrived in the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago, a loud THUD as it dropped through the letter-box onto the hallway floor. Being a coward when it comes to such things I sent my wife to investigate. She returned with an unmarked envelope. Sure, we could've missed it when we came in from work that day; maybe trampled over it thinking it was a bill or something for one of the other flats. But the sound had been very distinctive and had been followed by footsteps on the street outside. Or at least they sounded like footsteps at first, but soon became more like something large with many legs scuttling along the road. Sometimes out of the corner of my eye I still see the monstrous shadow I caught slipping around the corner of the street when I peered out from the bedroom window...
I opened the envelope. Inside was a DVD. Fine, I thought, someone has decided to post a submission in the early hours of the morning. Nothing odd about that. Nothing odd about that at all. I ran through the list of films I had chosen to screen, but had no idea which it could be. A new submission then. Something I hadn't seen yet.
The disc appeared unmarked at first, just a few red splotches in what I now presume to have been the blood of the last poor soul to receive the film. And when I looked closer I noticed that some of the splotches formed arcane symbols in a pattern around the circumference. In the centre three words were scrawled in the same chilling style - 'DO NOT WATCH'
Dear reader, I watched it.
It was the single-most terrifying film I have ever seen. And I couldn't even make it to the end.
I did some research online. Others had seen the film. There were rumours on horror forums and blogs. Some claimed it had been banned in every country, others went further to say that a group of activists had sought out every copy and destroyed them all for fear of what it might do to the general public if released. Some claimed to have actually seen it, but the reviews I found were rambling streams of nonsensical text raving about seemingly unrelated subjects such as which circle of Hell contains the most bananas. Curiously it was always the very last post that the blogger in question had ever written, even when that post dated back several years...
Intrigued, I watched it again. The whole thing this time. And again. And after the seven-hundredth viewing (or thereabouts) it became clear what I must do. I knew why the film had been sent to me. I had to show EVERYONE...
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