Scary Saturday Shorts

Dispatches From The Underground

I can on occasion, let my excitement get the better of me. When I like a film, I really like a film, and as is often the case, I'll wear myself out in an attempt to make every single person who crosses my path know that they must like said film as well. I suppose in a nutshell, that is the entire reason I started The October Country, so I could do really great services for the world like pass on movies such as this one, BlinkyTM. See, most of the charities around my neck of the woods are religious in nature which doesn't sit so well with me, so I figured informing the world about great works of genre art was the next best thing, karmicly speaking (hey, I'm not gonna get into hell on my good looks alone). So believe me when I say today, my excitement does runneth over for what is in store for you dear readers. Also, believe me when I say that out of all the short films that we have viewed for consideration of hosting on our site this year, BlinkyTM is by far our favorite, and hopefully soon to be yours as well.

A story about a boy, his robot and the consequences of his anger at the disintegration of his parents marriage.

Alex ( Max Records, Where the Wild Things Are) is looking for the normal loving family life that he hasn't got - his parents are too busy fighting with each other to worry about the effect on him. Modern technology comes to the rescue in the form of Blinky, a robot designed to be a companion/assistant but ultimately becomes more a best friend and surrogate family member.

Not getting the love he is looking for from Blinky, Alex soon becomes bored with Blinky and starts treating him badly, making conflicting demands of him that ultimately result in a failure of his software. On reboot, only one demand remains intact.

Equally moving and horrifying in equal measure, Academy Award nominated director Ruairi Robinson (Fifty Percent Grey, 2002) fills his masterful short to the brim with melancholy, angst, wonderment and our audience's favorite, slowly creeping menace that twists it's noose around the anticipating viewer right up until BlinkyTM's final, sick punchline. Proof positive that great horror comes in all shapes and sizes. Be they feature length films, or modest shorts. Even in the form of a friendly, pint sized robot you won't soon forget.

"Ready or not, here I come."

We are providing you with two options to watch BlinkyTM. The first is the embedded video below with simple instructions at the bottom to get it to play. The second is that you may watch BlinkyTM in HD over on Vimeo (which was not embeddable) by clicking here.




If you are having trouble with the player, simply click the "close ad" option at the bottom (then close the ad that pops up as a new window as a result) then click "start video now" and you should be off. Enjoy!