Peephole

Directed by Jaron Henrie-McCrea
Starring: Jaron Henrie-McCrea
Channel: Jash Pictures, Inc.
Uploaded Jan. 26, 2018
Link to Movie

Watch our review on Peephole

Logline: A woman seeks help from her therapist for a recurring nightmare, only to face an unsettling and horrifying reality.

Stills taken from Peephole Review by Hamp Overton

What happens when you switch from comedy to horror? Peephole by Jaron Henrie-McCrea takes us on such a journey in a short film that shifts from amusing to dark very quickly.

A man (Tim Lueke) is sleeping on his couch in front of a TV set screening marionettes dancing to a jaunty song. He wakes up, and while watching the program, he hears a knock at the door of his apartment. Muting the TV, he goes to the door to look out through the peephole. There he sees a man dressed exactly like him, but facing away from the door towards the opposite side of the hall. Confused, he opens his door, but the man is gone.

Shutting the door, he heads back to the couch and then there is another knock. He returns to the peephole to look and again, he sees the man facing away from him. This time, however, he notices the man is not only dressed like him but is also mirroring his movements. The other man is hunched over like he is at the peephole, and his hand is on the wall like his is on the door. Sure enough, when he moves his arm, so does the man in the hallway.

Curious at first he moves some more and watches as the twin outside copies him. He pauses, looks back at the TV with the dancing marionettes, and decides to dance also. The twin outside follows suit.

This amuses him until the hallway lights turn off with a loud crack; when they flicker back on, and the twin is gone. Then, with a buzz, the lights inside his apartment go off and back on. The jaunty music starts up again. The man slowly turns away from the door and sees his twin standing inside his apartment. The twin is facing away from him in the exact pose that he is in. As he moves, so does the twin.

Clearly deciding it’s time to get out of there, the man slowly reaches for the front doorknob. As he starts to turn it, he is shocked, frozen by an unseen force that begins to control him, and his hand pulls the doorknob right off the door. The twin then moves his fingers in a walking motion, forcing the man to walk awkwardly towards him like a marionette. He is “walked” right up behind the twin, who is still facing away. Static can be heard as the TV loses its signal. In the flickering light, the twin violently snaps to face him, resets, and then locks in onto him again - this time accompanied by a terrifying scream, sickening white eyes and a demented expression of horror.

Opening the door is usually a bad idea in a horror film and that is proven true here once again. Playing with this idea of the “vulnerability of the threshold”, which we see illustrated often in vampire movies, Peepholedirector Jaron Henrie-McCrea, cleverly combines this idea with another trope, and that of the doppelganger. In doing so he creates an original concept that is as intriguing as it is horrifying.

< PREVIOUS REVIEW | NEXT REVIEW>