And finally, the last short of our Ben Swicker/Goodale Horror series: Within the Walls. Short, sweet, and scary.
This story is based on true events.
Within the Walls, Goodale Horror
We open to film grain masking a small house in the night. A mother wishes her son a good night, telling him to the creaks the house is making (it’s an old house, of course). But alas, the boy cannot sleep as the noises from inside his closet grow louder and more purposeful. And to his terrified surprise, a face appears through the cracked-open closet door.
It doesn’t take much to tell a scary story, and Within the Walls does so much in such little time. From the film grain to the music and even the boy’s room decor, everything evokes such a nostalgic feeling that puts us back in our own childhood bedrooms, silently listening to the bumps in the night. And as a mom with a young kid, I am very familiar with those “I had a bad dream” late-night awakenings. Within the Walls makes the threat real though, when they return to discover a previously unknown opening in the boy’s closet.
We all have a baseline primal fear of something sinister entering an area we deem safe: our homes, and more often, our bedrooms. Within the Walls bases itself off of that fear, and though this story reads more like an urban legend, there are countless instances of break-ins that happen in real life. There are even real instances of people going undetected living in someone’s attic space. And it certainly doesn’t help that the short only shows an establishing outside shot and the boy’s room (along with some of the hallway); everything is so tight and compact that we feel claustrophobic… and even worse, closer than we’d like to be to the hidden danger in the closet.
Within the Walls is most definitely three minutes of fear. Three minutes of wondering if you checked all the closets. Three minutes of wondering what that sound in the other room was. Three minutes of cowering under the covers.
Within the Walls and other shorts can be found on www.goodalehorror.com. Be sure to give them a follow on Instagram as well!
