Masters of Horror - 102 - H.P. Lovecraft’s Dreams in the Witch House

Director: Stuart Gordon

Writer: Dennis Paoli, Stuart Gordon, H.P. Lovecraft

Tagline: Their wildest dreams are your worst nightmares.

Actors: Ezra Godden, Jay Brazeau, Campbell Lane, Chelah Horsdal

Original Air Date: November 4, 2005

Runtime: 55m

Category: Supernatural, Witchcraft

Synopsis: Walter, a young physics student, finds a room for rent in a very creepy looking house. After helping his neighbor, Francis and her baby, Danny, with a rat problem, they become good friends. After a while he starts having very vivid nightmares about witches and rats with human faces. His downstairs neighbor informs him of the house’s evil secret: that a witch possesses young men who live in his room to do her bidding. Once he realizes that the old man is right, it might be too late! The witch enters his room at night when he is sleeping through a parallel dimension portal located in one corner of his room. The witch wants Walter to sacrifice Danny so the Devil can take his soul. Is Walter strong enough to resist the witch and save Danny’s life? Almost as importantly, can Walter convince the police, or anyone else for that matter, that he’s not crazy?

Review: This short was not terribly captivating. I was not that impressed with the concept or the storyline. The dialog was mediocre and the special effects look like something out of The Dead Hate the Living! (2000). Whatever the degree of boredom I felt during these 55 minutes of “horror”, if that’s what you want to call it, it served me no joy. I did not like this one at all. The ending, which is supposed to be one of the best parts of a horror flick, was weak and unintelligible. In my opinion, not worthy to be put in the “Masters of Horror” series.

Rating: 9. All of the things that make a horror movie were not present. The story was boring and the special effects were just as lame. I don’t think that anything in this movie struck my fancy at all. But I do have to give credit to Mr. Stuart Gordon for giving it the old “college try.” I’m just not partial to witch movies because they don’t seem real enough to scare me. I know that witches aren’t real anyway, but still. I would not recommend this film to anyone, even though it is better than some other things I have seen, done with bigger budgets and longer time-span. (9of25).