And creeping you out is the aim of the upcoming web series and latest project from Melbourne filmmaker Stuart Simpson of Lost Art Films titled The Dark Psychosis. It’s a free web series to be released in 5 Twilight Zone style episodes, launching on Thursday May 5. The release of the short films follows a successful festival run of the Lost Art Films feature El Monstro Del Mar! screening worldwide and winning over 20 awards last year.
The new series spans the horror genre, showcasing schlock to suspense in full technicolour blood-and-guts glory, with five monthly episodes in total averaging 20 minutes each. The episodes use short films that have been produced by Simpson and his team over the last three years.
“I wanted to put them together. I always loved the old Twilight Zone show and I love the idea of tying together little horror films. Especially with the shorts, you have a lot more freedom to experiment and have more fun with it. A lot of them are by-products of our features, where we have a lot of effects left over and we just go “let’s go nuts” and get ridiculously gory and have lots of fun.” Simpson says the stuff ranges from “mutants, zombies, aliens, psychopaths, to hungry belly buttons. A real mixed bag.”
The twisted plotlines glue the series together, throwing back to the ways of B-grade ’80s horror films. “They are all of the same flavour – all ridiculously over-the-top horror and sci-fi, very gory, very trashy, comedy-style and lots of fun. Though there is a lot of variation in there as well, including some serious and dark atmospheric horror, which is less on the gore and more on the psychological side. We are hoping there’s enough variety in the shorts to provide something for everyone.”
Steering away from the mainstream horror remakes he hates of the last 5 years, Simpson instead draws inspiration from old classic horror films and also from unique Asian horror films like the Ring. “Brian De Palma’s Carrie is a film I always think back to and I’m a huge Cronenberg fan so I love The Brood and The Fly and Videodrome, plus Lynch’s Ëraserhead and Kubrick’s The Shining and Raimi’s Evil Dead films. I guess the one thing I hold fondly above all else with these films is their originality. With the shorts in The Dark Psychosis I’ve tried to do something different but always keeping the audience in mind. It must be entertaining.”
So why the web? Stuart points out that short films are hard to market in general, so it’s more about making sure they are seen. “We’ve already made them because we love making movies, so why not share them? And using the web mean that the shorts will be as accessible as possible to as many people as possible.”
One point of difference from The Dark Psychosis to typical horror productions is the all-female leads. “It’s fun to write stuff around females because it is different to what you usually see in horror genre. I love kickass chicks,” he laughs. The girls are sourced from auditions posted on message boards and social networking. “We’ve discovered some real gold, talent-wise!”
Simpson is the writer/director/camera-lighting/editor/visual effects artist for all of the Dark Psychosis content. He collaborates with his long time friend and colleague Nick Kocsis, who did all the practical special make-up effects and creature effects which makes up a large portion of these bloody films.
He hopes to highlight the work of the team in preparation for production on their next feature film as well as showcase their skills and passion for the horror genre, which Simpson believes is not supported enough in Australia.
Simpson is currently working to the last minute to make the launch this week as successful as possible, plus gathering his resources to make more shorts for the upcoming episodes. So support Australian film and horror by grabbing someone snuggle-worthy, logging on, and scaring yourself silly.
