Short Film Review: The Amulet of Fear (2020)

April 7, 2020

Written by DanXIII

Daniel XIII; the result of an arcane ritual involving a King Diamond album, a box of Count Chocula, and a copy of Swank magazine, is a screenwriter, director, producer, actor, artist, and reviewer of fright flicks…Who hates ya baby?

A woman (Ludovica Ferraro) is home alone one moonlit night, and happens across an arcane amulet located within a wicked wicker basket… and once said moonlight falls upon that jazzy jewelry a monster is released mirroring the one featured in the Stephen King book our heroine is reading to pass the time!

Writer/director Andrea Ricca truly delivers the ghoulish goods in this creature feature-style sinister short… a short that plays out without a single, solitary word of dialog no less!

Because of said lack of dialog, the film’s only actor, the aforementioned Ferraro, has to do all of the heavy lifting with her expressions and body acting alone… and to that end she is a champ; creating a believable and sympathetic heroine we can root for over the films scant  five minute and change runtime.

As for the creature of the piece, it’s a rather cool looking humanoid terror that is realized with surprisingly good CG for a film of this budget… scratch that, the marauding monster looks damn good period, but as is my eternal preference, I would have loved to see this bitey-beastie realized with practical, man-in-suit goodness… but you have to work with what gets you the most bang for your buck in the independent horror biz.

As you can surmise, The Amulet of Fear  is a heady blend of Gothic tropes (the young woman alone in a house of sinister secrets, monster movie mayhem, and twists and turns (which I won’t go into here ‘natch) that you would do well to fix your putrid peepers upon (and thankfully you can right below my revoltin’ review)!

 

 

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