Halloween: The Witching Hour is a short film set in the world of Michael Myers. Which world? Don’t think about it. It was written and directed by Glenn Payne.

This is an amateur film project. The acting was often amateurish. John McCustion‘s performance as nameless scientist was a step above the others, but everyone was trying. One thing I do whilst watching horror is stare at the corpses to see if they’re breathing regularly. Even major actors and actresses have made the mistake of being caught breathing. Not here. If someone is committed to being dead in a project like this, it’s a good sign. The characters were barely characters, and the character relationships were as flimsy as possible. The Witching Hour wanted to set up the ending and slash stuff. Plotwise, little else was given importance. The dialogue is ok. There isn’t enough of it for me to label good or bad.

Halloween: The Witching Hour was less than eight minutes long, and to me, it felt even shorter. As a slasher film, it was not suspenseful. It casually incorporated the slasher formula, but it lacked all the things that helps make that formula impactful. Several people died, but it was hard to invest in characters who have little to no investment put in them. The choreography of the kills and confrontations can be described as clunky or stiff, and the kills themselves were tame and obscured. Leaving horrific actions to the imagination is an important tool for any budget-conscious horror film. I’m not saying it was bad they did this. I’d be surprised if it wasn’t an overall benefit. Even if they had the budget to go all in on effects, The Shape is a classier breed of killer who often works best when paired with more realistic kills than his peers. The lack of exciting deaths was just one more thing added to a list of things that were not here. It is worth mentioning that the story left room for answers regarding this approach to Michael Myers, so if you want a reason to give some things a pass, it’s there. Blood was the only practical effect, and it was pretty good. The best technical achievement was the sound and how it was used. It also had a visual clarity many no-budget independent films lack.

What Halloween: The Witching Hour did well was pay tribute to the Halloween franchise. I feel as if Glenn Payne is a person who appreciates the franchise in its entirety, and I think that expressed itself here. What’s bad and what’s good more or less cancelled each other out to create an average experience. All the little references added a lot of zing to that experience, helping to prevent it from feeling hollow. At the end of the day, I had a better time watching this and can make a better defense for it than Halloween Ends.

6 out of 10.