Horror Short Review: Dead Enders (2024)

Dead Enders is an old-school monster horror short from Fidel Ruiz-Healy & Tyler Walker. It comes in at around twelve and a half minutes, and stars Skarlett Red, Jeff Murdoch, Joseph Rene, and Lilliana Winkworth.

Setting out exactly what it is from the start, we see some sort of crab-like parasite deep in the earth. Directly above it? Luckee’s Petroleum & Frack Shack. Oh boy. Can you see where this is going already?

One of the workers expresses his concerns about the depths they are drilling across the radio, which is dismissed by the supervisor. Of course, this is a mistake as they unleash the creatures and end up dead. All this happening within the first minute.

Meanwhile, down the street at a gas station, the clerk Maya is introduced and she couldn’t give two shits about this job. Although she does get a kick out of messing with her manager, Walt and never says no to the employee beer discount.

The banter here, which also involves two police officers, is amusing. Adding to the rich feel of old-school horror the short has. Especially when the two police officers ignore a radio call about reports of giant murderous bugs on the rampage. Murderous bugs that have done the damage at the oil site, and have now made their way to the gas station.

All of this should be more than enough to sell this short to you and Dead Enders delivers on all expectations of fun, silly, and entertaining horror. With a such a short runtime, everything is kept peppy, but it still gives plenty of time to enjoy the characters and the great performances by the actors. Which includes the bugs themselves, sometimes CGI (purposefully bad looking), but mostly practical (impressively gross looking).

Alas, the ending isn’t that great, and you can’t help but think more could have been done with it. However, it’s still a must see short, and you can check it out below.