13 Days of Halloween – Horror Short Review: Haunter (2020)

From director Philip Brocklehurst comes a supernatural horror short to thrill and chill this Halloween. Called Haunter, impressively the entire short was filmed on a Samsung Galaxy A10.

At 2:59AM, something arrives in the house of an unknown person. We see from the point of view of this thing as it moves from room to room uttering whispered sounds that drip in evil intent.

Asleep in bed, we see the resident of this house, a man who is woken up as the activity in his house ramps up. The bathroom sink taps turn on, a chair begins to move downstairs, a door begins to slam, and a stereo is turned on. It’s all very Evil Dead.

The man goes downstairs to investigate and gets a door slammed in his face. He opens the door and goes into the room with the stereo whereupon he gets locked inside. Cupboard doors begin to open and shut leading to the man shouting “enough”. Which seems to work as all the activity but the stereo stops.

He turns it off, the door opens but before he can leave, a knife comes out of its block and whizzes towards him. If you want to see where that knife ends up, you’ll have to check out the short yourself below.

To be brutally honest, it’s not worth your time. Haunter is very amateurish and doesn’t seem like it’s supposed to be taken too seriously. The ‘activity’ is boorish whereas attempts to create atmosphere with music and shots, fail. Simply by the camera work focusing on uninteresting things like a chair or bathroom taps.

The man in question makes some very silly faces but also takes it all in his stride. It suggests he has been dealing with this stuff before but it’s not conveyed very well. Then we have the end which really doesn’t payoff what was witnessed so far.

The effort is admirable but execution needs a lot more work.