REVIEW: Berenice [2014]

“I wanted it to hurt” One chapter from the horror anthology Creepers, Jeremiah Kipp‘s adaptation of Edgar Allen Poe‘s disturbing short story Berenice finds itself hindered by what I can only guess was a shoestring budget. A director who has excelled at creating stunning pitch-black tone with ambiguously delicious mystery in carefully composed thrillers, this twenty-minute horror finds itself delivering more unintentional laughs than frightening scares. The over-the-top and often amateurish acting does no favors and its brightly lit digital presentation of footage with a do-it-yourself sensibility puts the artifice…

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REVIEW: The Minions [2014]

“I shouldn’t have went there” Director Jeremiah Kipp once again amps up the mood with his latest short The Minions to follow his similarly aesthetically-constructed The Days God Slept. From the camera angles catching his actors’ expressions in a way that cultivates mystery, the score pulsing along with the imagery as though everything is set to its beat, and the dark subject matter underlying its elaborate masking of reality in the supernatural, William’s (Lukas Hassel) nightmare gradually becomes ours. Scripted by Joseph Fiorillo—and supposedly based on a true story of…

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VIDEO: Aaron David Gleason’s “Mastermind”

Director Jeremiah Kipp—who sent me his impressive short film The Days God Slept (review) last year—has just released a music video he created for Aaron David Gleason‘s new song “Mastermind”. A mood piece of aggression with a cast that includes The Princess Bride‘s Chris Sarandon and the musician’s mother—of Boogie Nights fame—Joanna Gleason, Kipp gives us multiple characters in rhythmic cross-cuts and split screen as the music plays. Check it out below:

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REVIEW: The Days God Slept [2013]

“Things are both precisely and not at all as they appear” It’s often us—not the people we care about—who we hide our past secrets from in order to get through the day. Our actions—whether the result of youth, stupidity, or complete and utter desire—are what define us; they are what make us into unique individuals roaming this earth with identical quests for happiness to be fulfilled in ways exclusive to our own body and soul. To open oneself to another is to peel away years of isolating guilt and regret,…

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