Alex Magaña's Weekly Tales of Terror: Inmate 666 and Be Careful What You Wish For Movie Reviews

Alex Magaña needed to take a little break apparently. Let’s face it – 2020 is a real bitch, and it’s hard to make a film every week no matter how short it is even in a “normal” year. Thankfully, he’s back and showing off some new skills that he’s learned while wandering the wilderness or whatever it is he was doing on hiatus from his weekly mini nightmares.

Alex Magana’s Weekly Tales of Terror have been fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable to watch because you’re watching a filmmaker sharpen his knife and learn how to use it over the passage of time. Every week brings a new style to try out, a new subgenre to lovingly exploit. It’s clear that Magaña has a taste for horror, and now he has two more tiny tales of the bizarre and the inexplicable to properly thrill you with.

Let’s get to it, shall we?

Inmate 666 (1:48): A young woman (Katy Ford) is waiting for her friend in a deserted parking lot. Across the darkened lot, a man in an orange jumpsuit stands motionless and stares at her. When she flicks on her lights, he disappears. When she turns them off, he’s back. It’s deeply unnerving, but the arrival of her friend (Sabrina Kroeber) should help…except she sees him too. Once the radio broadcast comes in (on station 666!) about the escaped inmate, it’s already too late. This short is trope heavy (lights off trick, radio broadcast, jump scare with the friend), but it’s used effectively. It’s another essential part of the modern horror filmmaker’s toolkit. They’re in a great everyday location that feels quite isolated, and the radio frequency is a cute touch with just enough camp to it.

Be Careful What You Wish For (2:00): The birthday girl (Ashley Elliott; When We Dance) is preparing to blow out the candles on her 21st birthday cake. Her friends are all standing around and celebrating. Once the lights go out and all the balloons pop, though, it becomes clear that something is amiss. The lights return, but the sanity doesn’t – her friends are frozen in terror as she compulsively eats the entire cake to everyone’s horror. It’s grotesque, it’s gluttonous…and the cake doesn’t even look that good! When the lights go out again, what happens after they come back on is somehow more awful than before. I have to say, this is far and away the strongest of his shorts to date. The premise is simple, but the payoff is so ludicrous and yet so plausibly awful that you’ll feel that grin as it spreads across your face. The creep factor is there from the get-go, but it really gets weird when you see the party-goer's expressions. Another big step up this time is the music; it’s practically a character in this short. What Be Careful What You Wish For ultimately does is prove that horror is extremely subjective. Without blood, a monster, or even a jump scare, this is horrifyingly freaky!