We’re dealing with some low-stakes, low-budget horror fare with this one, but that shouldn’t automatically be seen as a bad thing. Shoestring gore can be a beautiful thing when done right, and in all honesty, if you want an example of why budget isn’t everything, horror is a pretty good place to start. And with this in particular, we have a high school horror drama where a bullied emo kid discovers that a ravenous vampire has taken up residence in his backyard shed. Let’s see how far we can get into this review without bringing up a certain franchise all about high school and vampires.
The writing from director Frank Sabatella leans on a lot of clichés and tropes to fill out his characters, along with an Eli-Rothian insistence that the bulk of the characters here be as thinly loathsome as possible. As much as I honestly relate to Jay Jay Warren’s Stan (more on that in a bit), that’s probably because he’s such concentrated emo (broken home, self-harm, love of angsty music) without any real nuance. To say nothing of Cody Kostro’s Dommer, Stan’s best friend and constant victim of the school bullies, who is a walking ball of rage and vengeance that… actually ends up highlighting why the tropey writing isn’t entirely a negative. Namely, because it streamlines the film’s decent attempt at monster metaphor.
The vampires here are about as animalistic as they’ve ever been, and the way the titular Shed is utilised makes for some solid use of budget and setting, but that’s not what I mean as far as the metaphor. It’s not the character of the monster (as there really isn’t one), but the viciousness of the monster itself. Once Stan finally shares his new neighbour with Dommer, Dommer’s first thought is to use it to get payback on the bullies that keep picking on him. In turn, the shed becomes a metaphor for… well, basically the rage that lies in the heart of people (these ‘teenagers’ are all Dawson-cast, but nonetheless) who have to deal with that kind of treatment. And not just from those their own age either, as Stan’s grandfather is shown to be a right piece of work himself.
Have to admit, even though the minor pacing and the wildly inconsistent soundtrack cut into it a bit, watching this definitely brought back memories of my own high school life. Where my general social awkwardness and lack of emotional control kept me at odds with a lot of my schoolmates. Where my inability to process how shitty I felt every day resulted in me inflicting just as much pain on others as I got dealt myself.
Not fun times, and certainly not a unique situation to be in, but where I’m getting with this is that this film works surprisingly well as a metaphor for what that feels like. Where the power trade-off between bullies and their victims can result in a radical reversal, seeing pain as something to be shared once it reaches yourself. Granted, it’s about as finessed as a given episode of Goosebumps, but for a story about teenagers that is this riddled with angst and How Could This Happen To Me (not literally, although the soundtrack reaches that level at times), it’s got a lot more resonance than it reasonably should have. I don’t see enough to make this worth hunting down, but if it happens to show up for streaming, there are worse ways to spend 90 minutes.
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