13. Under the House
"The four men, believing the film to be incomplete, came to finish it."
Referencing and very effectively rendering found footage in horror – itself a major innovation in horror cinema – this tale tracks the journey of four horror enthusiasts to an old house in a wooded rural setting, where a "cult classic" of obscure found footage horror was once recorded.
The original film surfaced on YouTube amidst "dead ends of fake Twitter handles and message streams". And the original is an atmospheric masterpiece of DIY cinematic unease that is described within the story, replete with unnerving props, and also quoted and remarked upon constantly by the four enthusiasts in the present action of the story.
The two mediums close on becoming the same thing as the new group of investigators go under the house just like their precursors, recording as they go, to create a weird loop over another’s experience, but heading towards what might be a similar fate… Wehunt doesn’t only express some startling ideas in this story, and tell it so effectively, but he also possesses a delicate touch that grasps the minutiae of the strange and the responses of the sensitive to such stimuli, thus making the tale feel authentic as modern myth. For me, he’s produced a sublimely weird and chilling story. It appeared recently in the author’s impressive debut collection, Greener Pastures.
Recommendation: Greener Pastures (Shock Totem Publications)
