Sadly Over-hyped

Just perfect...

Fantastic!

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

A man is wowed to have been given an old-fashioned Jack-in-the-box for free by a mysterious old lady, while his pretty blonde buxom wife is immediately creeped out by the thing and wants nothing to do with it. Soon after they go to bed and late in the night the man is awakened by the sound of something scuttling around the house. He heads downstairs and hears the cheery box's tune which almost seems to beckon him. He approaches it and abruptly vanishes in a big splatter of gore as something unseen and monstrous emerges from the box and drags him inside. Wifey soon comes looking for him and the box begins to play for her, and as she steps closer it springs open with one ghastly surprise that she'll never forget! It's a cool short but I must say it's been overrated. I liked it, it's very well presented and has a good spooky atmosphere and a suspenseful buildup to the guy being eaten alive and it goes out on a good scary macabre sight gag, but it's still hardly the most complex or disturbing horror short ever. It's a very straightforward start-to-finish jump-scare story and that's fine, but there are superior horror shorts out there, like the excellent "Terrifier" by Damien Leone to name but one. And this wasn't particularly representative of any old school horror to me, the only thing that did strongly remind me of something that I'd seen before was how the box was similar to the one from Demonic Toys, only that one was a lot more creepy! I wish in the part where the guy can hear something and he almost steps on the doll they could have shown the little clown from the empty box running around the floor or something, and they definitely should've shown some kind of giant monster clown chomping on the him for a moment, and at the end, when it shows the harmless-looking cute clown of the box, it should have winked! It would have made the fear factor of the short more effective.. It's a little short on content and feels a bit truncated and rushed, but this is a nice eerie little short that makes great use of a classic spooky plot device. And like a good horror movie, you kind of know how it's going to end up...but you love to watch anyway just to see how it's all gonna go down!

"Slash-in-the-Box" is a 5-minute short film from five years ago that was written and directed by Nick Everhart. It shows us the life of a couple and what happens when the man brings home a jack-in-the-box for whatever reason. Apparently, the little cube is cursed or something, or possessed with an evil spirit as it certainly has a life on its own and keeps wreaking havoc. It is a mix of comedy and horror, but I personally felt it does not turn out convincingly in either of these two areas. Plus the female actress was pretty bad and I wonder if she had any purpose really other than showing us her great looks and curves in her night outfit. The guy is slightly better, but also far from good enough to carry this little movie. I hope Everhart managed to improve in the five years since this was made, otherwise I cannot foresee a great character for him in the industry. As for this one here, I do not recommend the watch.

As far as clichés go, Slash-in-the-Box has them all: possessed toys, ball bouncing down stairs, hot female lead, wise-ass male lead, clowns, overly- curious characters, and wondering a dark house at night (though they actually turned a light on which is unheard of). There were a couple clever scenes but aside from that there's not much to be gained from watching this. A couple jumpscares might get you here and there but personally I loath jumpscares and think they're very short- lasting and uncreative ways to scare your audience. The gore wasn't too overdone, as I would've expected it to be in such a cliché of a short. Overall it wasn't bad though, the cinematography, acting and special effects were actually really good, the story and idea itself were just very dull and the methods to convey said story and idea were way too cliché for my liking.

For a 5 minute feature, you get the initial feeling that you may be disappointed in how the horror is going to develop, but as soon as you hit play, Slash-in-the-Box delivers like a full length horror feature. Overall the film has an 80's, early 90's horror atmosphere to it and you can tell that's what the director was attempting to accomplish, despite the very modern surroundings. The pacing was surprisingly good, considering there was only 5 minutes to progress the plot in. The acting was another plus. The actors did a great job of making their characters believable in the short amount of time they were on screen. The title object was also a great, creepy pick on the director's behalf. He's got the evil clown thing nailed. All in all, if you want a great five minutes of good, old fashioned horror, then Slash-in-the-Box is a great pick.