Have you ever watched a gory horror movie, and thought to yourself “Aw man, who’s going to clean up all that blood?” Then this is the short for you!
Today, we’ll be discussing the horror-comedy short, “Shiny New World,” by Jan van Gorkum. It is now streaming on Alter’s YouTube channel, and you can also watch it at the end of this article. It might inspire you to get your own script ready for the current Killer Shorts Horror Short Screenplay Competition.
The Plot
This is shot in the style of an instructional video for new employees of the fictional clean-up company, Shiny New World. This company focuses specifically in the aftermaths of situations when demons attack.
A cleaner named Barry is called to one of their standard work situations: a group of teenagers vacationing in an isolated bungalow in the middle of the forest, read from a scary-looking, ancient book, and unleash a horrific evil. Barry demonstrates a lot of the company’s procedures, over the course of what turns out to be a very rough day on the job, where even he breaks protocol and throws in the towel.
Patrick Stoof as Barry in “Shiny New World”
Working 9 to 5
This is a movie about a situation that’s extremely reminiscent of The Evil Dead movies. Except it shows almost none of what happened to the victims after they read from the book. All we know is that most, if not all of them, are either dead or possessed, and that’s all we need to know. The only truly important detail is that there’s blood and gore everywhere.
It takes this concept in an absurdist comedy direction. And it sets up the contrast between the silly tone and the gruesome concept, by opening on some eerie shots of the forest, before quickly changing to the bright, shining logo of the titular company (see picture at the top of this article) set to upbeat music.
But despite the mostly upbeat tone, there are still some aspects that are unsettling. Such as the introduction of a “blood bank” which is some kind of deformed Cronenberg-esque person who appears to have a vacuum cleaner in his stomach. He isn’t necessarily scary per se, but the idea of a man sucking blood and gore off the ground and into his belly, is just a little bizarre and uncomfortable.
And they even manage to throw in a brief scene to make the viewer squirm, with a possessed disembodied hand accidentally bending his fingernail back. Ironic how in a short full of blood and gore, the most disturbing violence is completely bloodless, and happens to something that doesn’t give off any indication that he can even feel it.
But I’d be lying if I said that this wasn’t far more humorous than scary. What makes it work, is the imagination put into the bizarre procedures that this (secret?) agency treats as mundanely as a janitor mopping the floor at the end of the day.
What Makes It Killer
Shiny New World is an effective horror parody of instructional work videos, where the bizarre and gruesome become just a part of the daily grind.
Watch it below.
Connect with the Filmmakers:
