Shortcut – Nice Horror
Director: Alessio Liguori
Writer: Daniele Cosci (Screenplay)
Starring: Jack Kane, Zander Emlano, Zak Sutcliffe, Sophie Jane Oliver, Molly Dew, David Keyes, Terence Anderson, Andrei Claude
Plot: A mysterious creature terrorizes five teenage friends after their bus takes a shortcut on a desolate road in the wild.
Runtime: 1 hour 20 Minutes
There may be spoilers in the rest of the review
Story: Shortcut starts when five teenage friends Nolan (Kane), Karl (Emlano), Reggie (Sutcliffe), Bess (Oliver) and Queenie ‘IQ’ (Dew) are traveling for an astronomy field trip, when they take a shortcut, leading them to get hijacked by a gun carrying criminal.
When the bus they are traveling on breaks down in a tunnel, the adults get picked off by an unknown creature, leaving the five teenagers to find shelter and safety from the evil waiting for them, looking to hunt them down.
Thoughts on Shortcut
Characters & Performances – We get to meet the five teens, who will be our main characters, we have Nolan who is the quiet, smarter of the three guys, Bess will be the one that must go through the braver moments, leading to the fact the two are potential love interests too. Karl is the joker of the group, who will get the lines that most people are thinking while watching a horror. Reggie is the bad boy tough guy, who isn’t that tough, he is using this as a defence and does care about the group more than he is willing to admit. Queenie is the brains of the act, she will know most answers and will need to use those brains to help the group with their plans. The five young actors do a great job together, showing a natural chemistry which will keep them feeling like classmates, over just best friends.
Story – The story here follows five teenagers that find themselves tacking a shortcut and needing to face a battle against an unknown creature that has been waiting for victims in the darkness. This is a horror story that will show the unity between five classmates, that need to use each other’s strength to fight back against the evil. We get the shared unity that we have come to enjoy in the Stranger Things world, which you could see inspire plenty of this film. When it comes to learning about what the creature is, we get a nice back story that did need investigating, which works well the film, even if we are left with a bigger question about what happens early on in the story.
Themes – Shortcut is a horror that will put the five teenagers in a battle of life and death against an unknown creature, lurking in the darkness, waiting for victims. It will have hints at plenty of different known creatures, which does make it enjoyable to see what we might end up coming up against. The underground tunnel is used for the main location, which will show us just how trapped in enemy territory the characters are. Most of the creature is kept a well placed secret too, which will help make us wonder just what is going on through the film.
Shortcut is an enjoyable horror that could easily be part of the Stranger Things universe.