10 Horror Short Films Hollywood Should Adapt To Full Length

Two to twenty minutes of terror that deserve the full two hours.

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Horror is a film genre which has as many floppy, forgettable garbage films as it has really solid ideas, so much so that sometimes the really solid ideas become floppy, forgettable garbage films that wasted all their potential.

That said, horror is a genre full of possibilities, in which good, great, and even legendary films are able to find their audience, whether they be entirely original concepts or be based off of existing IP.

Some of the best horror films have, in recent years, come from equally effective and often much scarier short films, with Andrés and Barbara Muschietti's MAMA and David Sandberg's Lights Out as examples of masterful short-form horror stretched out into feature film length by Guillermo del Toro and James Wan respectively.

Horror short films (many of them available for viewing for free on youtube and other streaming sites) have made for some of the best fear-filled viewing of the internet age.

Whether to celebrate the Halloween season or just feeling the skin-crawling hunger for horror sometime in Mid-June, here's a list of some of the internet's best short horror films that have the added bonus of being ripe for Hollywood pickings, with stories that can make the transition to cinema without too much fuss.

10. Alexia

Somewhat in the vein of previous social media-related films, this particular short film by Andrés Borghi is effective in its special effects, with a man missing his dead ex and unfriending her on Facebook a year after her passing. Unfortunately for him, unfriending someone on social media has some severe consequences, even in death. Probably especially in death. His current girlfriend is particularly vulnerable when his dead ex-girlfriend starts messaging him on facebook post-mortem.

It's a simple premise, and while social-media related horror films often risk becoming very outdated very quickly given websites and their frequent updates, the depressing atmosphere and unsettling, deep-seated dread leading into the film's horrific main event, as well as the terror evoked in this film in its entirety, could very well make it timeless.

Or it could just make for simple, popcorn jumpscare fare. One of the best things about horror movies is that you don't always need a complicated story to make the film's terror effective, and keeping with the short film's oppressive atmosphere and blue-tinged, dark and evocative colour-scheme will definitely bring out those scares.

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Writer, artist, professional animator. Indie comics and Hi Nay podcast creator. Queer Filipino storyteller || @MotzieD on Twitter || Originally from Quezon City, The Philippines. Currently based in Toronto, Canada || motziedapul.com