It’s rare that a low-budget short film program crawls across my screen and makes any lasting impact. Short films usually have the unsavory reputation as demo reels for Directors looking to make an impact on agents, studio execs and potential employers. Most are missing some serious spark and I’m usually not too thrilled about watching a barrage of resume material. Happily all my fears were quelled on the subject when a parcel arrived postmarked Denmark on the sleeve. Inside I was granted entry into THE HORROR VAULT—and what terrible wonders it did behold.

Writer/Director/Producer/Star Kim Sønderholm has managed to compile a collection of 9 nasty little films together for a package that, at times, shimmers with glistening blades of brilliance. Like many other short film collections, not everything here works and not everything here gels together into a cohesive feature, but in the case of THE HORROR VAULT, the great certainly outweighs the bland.

Not everything included on the disc is a new production; in fact some of these shorts have been on the festival circuit already. The oldest in the collection, appears to be 2004’s DELUSION, a black and white melodrama that seeks to methodically recreate the horror thrillers of the 1930’s and 40’s studio system. Everything from the costume and set design and the mannered characterizations from the cast to the shot composition and the symphonic score are spot on. If the lead characters hair had not been so disheveled in the front, the film would have been virtually indistinguishable from its source inspirations. It’s inarguably the best short in the bunch and more importantly, the level of production quality exhibited in this segment speaks volumes about the type of work Sønderholm has assembled here.

While no other film manages to achieve the same level of perfection as DELUSION, THE HORROR VALUT is still stuffed to the gills with quality productions.

Several of the films have a retro vibe, which I rather enjoyed—and I assume the producers do as well. ALONE follows a terrified sorority girl trapped in the house one night with a killer on the loose. It has all the markings of a 1950’s chiller and once again the costumes and the performances from the cast are excellent—too bad the twist was crystal clear.

DEAD TO THE WORLD is a less successful entry that attempts to shed light on the Ted Bundy murders. It’s shot in a hyper realistic lighting scheme and the tale unfolds against a police interrogation of Bundy. Director Russ Diaper stars as Bundy and unfortunately he does a much better job acting than he does helming the film, which centers on the rape and murder of one Bundy victim.

RETINA is a Black and White experimental film that manages to evoke some of the acid-trippyness of 1960’s cinema. It is also one of the films here that sacrifices linear storytelling for sake of imagery. This works on a lot of levels for films like RETINA and the surrealistic hospital drama ECHOES but defeats itself during THE DEMON which follows a man who picks up a hitchhiker before going completely insane.

As Director, Kim Sønderholm has two shorts included in the set. The first, WHEN JOHN MET JULIA also involves picking up a hitchhiking woman—with some very unfortunate results. The production value on this short is definitely lacking, which makes the Directors second film MENTAL DISTORTION such a surprise. That film unfolds after a man (played by Sønderholm) awakens on his bathroom floor and soon discovers his naked girlfriend dead in the bathtub. It’s a very well made film with a satisfyingly non-resolute ending.

The most immediate film in the set, DISCONNECTED, is a black and whiter with a big difference. This one is packed with some cringe inducing special effects work. Normally one would want to enhance the color in a film as gore drenched as this one, but directors
David Boone and Josh Card know just what to show and just how to show it to keep your eyes peeled and your stomach churning. This is torture cinema for sure, but it also has a biting satirical bend to it. But, don’t let the black comedy fool you; it hurts watching some of this stuff.

THE HORROR VAULT begins auspiciously as the filmmakers decided to include a pair of GRINDHOUSE-style fake trailers—the problem here is, the trailers are filled with some painful CGI effects work, which makes the authentic sets, costumes and celluloid scratches look less realistic. They’re cheesy and that’s the point, but the bad CGI makes them look less like the product of their time and more like a poor attempt to cash in on a trend.

If this compilation has any major drawbacks it’s only that in never feels like an organized collection. Since the filmmakers decided to include the trailers beforehand, it might have made more sense to try and differentiate between the shorts in a more effective manner—even if that meant adding a couple of seconds of titles between the films. I understand the need to make the collection feel like a feature, and I’m glad to see that the producers didn’t cop to the Host/Hostess pitfall, but since the shorts are so varied in theme, texture and production value, it made the entity of the project seem just a bit unkempt.

Regardless of all that, this is still the best set of short film’s I’ve seen since last year’s SEVERED HEAD NETWORK and with a second volume of THE HORROR VAULT already in the works, it looks like it won’t be long before Kim Sønderholm and his crew deliver more quality programming our way.