A series of antique black-and-white scenes of rural Colorado town Animas Forks dissolve into each other. Mountains fading into forests fading into scenes of miners riding a mine car into the depths of a mountain. Dynamite explodes the side of a cliff. Fires rage through the mining town, leaving destroyed buildings behind. We end on an abandoned mine, a desolate lonely hole in the mountainside. As that last image changes to full-screen present-day color, a dead body is dragged into the darkness.

And that puts us right smack dab in the “middle-of-nowhere’ territory for this fourteen-minute-long film that quickly turns nightmarish.

Uncle Luke (Shawn Heitman) is visited at his remote cabin by his niece Emma (Emma Pasarow) and, after a brief chat, he takes her out hunting. He warns her there’s not much to hunt out there other than rabbits and squirrels, but they grab their rifles and start hiking.

They don’t find any little varmints, but they do come across a naked man chained by the neck to a big tree. Surprise! They free the man (Russell Shealy) and help him back to the cabin. As they try to decide what to do, someone comes a’knocking at the door.

Director Sam Blakesberg has put together a great little chiller on a limited budget that really takes advantage of its location and environment. Remote forests are inherently creepy, made even more so by an unknown creature that needs to be fed. This horror bonbon would feel right at home on an episode of Creepshow or Tales of the Crypt.

“Animas Forks” , named after an extinct mining town in Colorado, is definitely worth your time and you should check it out. Just make sure you don’t end up chained to a tree in the middle of the Colorado Rockies. You won’t like what comes sniffing around.

Animas Forks is an official selection of the Panic Film Fest.