It’s just paranoia…or is it?
As a child, most all of us are scared of things that go bump or squeak in the night. Whether we think it’s a monster under our bed, in our closet, or some stalking bogeyman right outside the door, from our earliest conception of night we understand it to be a place where darker things hide, where evil lurks, and where innocence is vulnerable.
Thing is, this fear never really goes away, not entirely. We might not call it “scared,” but regardless if we’re walking down the street, or getting in our cars, or even lying in bed reading a book, our senses are definitely more heightened at the stillness of midnight than they are at noon. We are wary of the night, we are on guard against it. And as The Whisperer, a short horror film from Danny Donahue proves, sometimes we should be.
A girl, home alone in her bedroom starts to hear things. A squeak here, then a whisper there. Problem is, she might have a slight history with mental illness, so the question is, how real are these things? Conceptually it’s a simple scenario, but the best horror always is, just simple tweaks to the ordinary that turn the world terrifying. And The Whisperer is certainly that.
Donahue has a host of horror shorts over on his YouTube channel, so after you finish with The Whisperer, catch your breath and check out some of his other work. There are also a handful of “Making Of” videos that take you behind the scenes to reveal how Donahue and crew pull off such blockbuster scares on a shoestring budget; burgeoning filmmakers especially should take note of these.
Related Topics: Horror, Short Films
