Red Lines: Hellraiser's Pinhead Minus Pins
This award-winning short horror piece falls a bit short of what I expected and far exceeded what I'd presumed. If having Doug Bradley, from Clive Barker's horror saga "Hellraiser ", in your film says anything as a statement… it's RUN!
Doug, the horror genre icon is stripped of his menacing pins, translucent white skin, and leather outfit in this short film to become a high school teacher who, nonetheless, remains as scary as he's ever been able to portray. Writer/Director Frazer Lee along with Robber Baron Productions found a simple scary edge to a humdrum teenage penance and placed it in a bowl of horror within a dreamy white-washed empty classroom. The result is Red Lines of which one can only deduce from the title, must have a tint of blood with a bit of scary. The undemanding and simple enough plot coupled with a young actresses no-no’s and a seasoned veteran actor's old bag of tricks makes no attempt at making it any more complicated or suspense filled than it needs be. Frazer tells a terrifying story in six minutes and not one minute too long.
Kirsty Levett, the actress who plays Emily, our dangerous hallway-running misfit seems not fit or experienced enough as a performer to handle the true fear that could've oozed out of her upon sighting the unthinkable and unexplained, yet she gives us the impression of a fine and up and coming young actress. Doug Bradley as the creepy teacher of course is another story… he does actually own the patent on scary stares and insinuative gestures, enters right on cue to set our errant student down for a good ole sitting of "write this a million times" before he performs a disappearing act right at the top of the film, only to return even more chilling than before.
It's all pretty straight forward horror with the lighting, the sound effects, and the quick cuts to the unthinkable and unexplainable, yet it leaves something of want in the viewer by film's end. I do have to give it to Frazer (who I'll never confuse with Kelsey Grammer's Frasier) does a great job of jolting you out of your seat when we meet, apparently, the previous sufferers of the detention day-mares who've been left behind to haunt the new troubled teens. I wasn't too clear on it but I think Frazer wished to lead us to believe they were the teacher's other student victims. I'm not entirely sure; but I am sure that the teacher has something to do with the dead girl (oops I gave it ALL away). Doug Bradley and Frazer Lee team-up with another Robber Baron production in the short film On Edge, find it here on Openfilm.
