runningscared: vampire icon (vampire)
Movie: The Shed (2019), directed by Frank Sabatella
Watched on: Shudder
Ran: 7.54 miles, 9’01”/mile, 01:07:58 (recovery run)

I was looking for something made recently and that I didn’t know anything about, but that would have some sort of supernatural element to it and not just be human-dude-with-a-chainsaw or whatever, since I'd done the serial-killer thing last night. I watched the trailer for The Shed and it fit the bill.

BaThe Shedsic plot: Stan is an orphan on probation with a month to go to adulthood, and lives in near-poverty with his abusive grandfather. He and his best friend Dommer (heh) are bullied constantly at school. Stan discovers that a vampire is living in his grandfather’s shed, like ya do. Dommer thinks the answer to their bullying problem is to feed bullies to the shed-vamp, but Stan is less than certain. People go missing, the local sheriff gets suspicious, Stan’s crush Roxy wonders what’s up with him, bodies start piling up (figuratively speaking), there’s a whole running-home-through-back-yards-to-beat-the-adult-driving-there sequence that would do Ferris Bueller proud, we eventually arrive at the inevitable showdown at the ol’ homestead, and like in a lot of films of this ilk, the last five seconds of the movie had me asking “wait, what?

Interestingly I’ve seen some criticism that this flick isn’t “modern” and the characters act like they’re from the ‘80s or ‘90s. While I don’t think it’s explicitly a period piece, I personally had gotten the impression that this was intentionally set in the early ‘90s (no smartphones—or any cell phones—in sight, grunge fashion choices, etc.), and I find the lack of a caption stating “AMERICA, 1991” or something pretty cool. It’s nice to be kept guessing a bit on that front.

I should note the story relies—not once, but twice—on the plot device of a character not seeing a severed arm clearly lying on the ground pretty much right in front of them in broad daylight until the plot demands it. (Also, I’m not sure, but I think the arm disappears and reappears between shots at some point. Which, you know, would explain the whole “wait, is that an arm?” thing, I guess.) Bonus points for the band names on the photocopied punk show flyers duct-taped to Stan’s bedroom walls, though I was a little put out to notice that Stan had put up no fewer than four identical copies of a single flyer, which doesn’t strike me as a thing anyone would do.

Overall, though, thumbs up. It ain’t high art and I won’t be pondering it for long, but I did enjoy the flick, I was rooting for the heroes and against the jerks, the hour on the treadmill passed quickly, and I am eternally in love with Roxy. Get yourself a girlfriend who’ll help you carry a vampire corpse. Not to mention one who will save your life by beheading a vamp while there's still a big ol' knife sticking out of her shoulder—a knife that you just accidentally stuck in her, ya doofus.

3.0/5.0 bloody severed feet

December 2020

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welcome to my nightmare

I run literally every day, but I'm not supposed to be outside while the sun's up (for, um, reasons), and also there's a pandemic on and running in a mask sucks. On rare occasions I chance a late-night run on unlit and deserted paths, but maybe 85% of the time these days, I run on a treadmill in my living room.

Running on a treadmill for an hour is boring, though, especially day after day. My solution? Watching horror flicks. I queue up a scary movie and let the miles fly by. The speed boost of an adrenaline rush is just an added bonus. Allow me to share with you the myriad wonders of... RUNNING SCARED.

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