THE KINOGO UNEASE A MONTHLY DISPATCH OF HORROR, STORYTELLING & THE UNEASE

Welcome back to The Unease.

Thoughts on horror, filmmaking, and the stories shaping the genre.

Halloween is a collection of feelings and rituals that we’ve somehow agreed belong together. Along with Christmas, it’s one of the holidays most defined by traditions carried from childhood into adulthood. Trick-or-treating, staying up late, decorations, being scared… it’s why Universal brings back Halloween Horror Nights every year and Disney offers Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween Party.

Inevitably, you’ll hear someone debate whether The Nightmare Before Christmas belongs to Christmas or Halloween. But what better way to get into the spirit than watching films that elicit nervous giggles, joyful yelps and the occasional embrace of a loved one?

The independent film Buddy was released at the end of August, and if any recent film embraces the weird and dysfunctional, it’s this one. The $3 million indie has already grossed nearly $16 million domestically after its second weekend, another reminder that audiences continue to crave horror that feels different.

Here at Kinogo, we believe that embrace of the unique is part of what draws audiences to horror and all of us to the Halloween season. Nostalgia for our youth, a little rebellious spirit and the desire to get a little scared are all part of what makes Halloween feel like Halloween. . . and all things we hope to continue delivering with our upcoming films.

Updates from Kinogo Pictures, projects in development, and what’s coming next.

Nothing feels more like Halloween than costumes, good people and horror stories, and Kinogo is excited to announce that we’ll be attending this year’s Son of Monsterpalooza, October 9–11, where we’ll have our own booth.

The Kinogo Unease was started as a way to embrace our fans and the larger horror community, and Son of Monsterpalooza will mark our first opportunity to connect directly with many of you. We’ll have merchandise from past films, giveaways and some exclusive behind-the-scenes looks at our latest projects.

Tickets are available HERE  for the horror convention taking place in Burbank October 9–11. Our frequent collaborators at Dark Atlantic, who worked with us on Dark Hollow, Project Dorothy and Send A Scare, will have a booth at the convention as well. We hope to see you there!

Whatever kind of horror gets you into the Halloween spirit, we hope there’s a Kinogo film waiting for you.

Upcoming horror releases and films creeping towards theaters and screens.

Here are a few projects we’ll be watching this fall.

Resident Evil

Zach Cregger has become one of the most exciting directors working in horror, and his take on Resident Evil may be the film we at Kinogo are most excited to see this fall. It’ll already be released by the time this issue comes out. . . so hopefully it lives up to the hype.

Other Mommy

The premise of a paranormal entity taking on the appearance of a young girl’s mother is immediately terrifying. Replacing the one person a child knows they can turn to. . . Other Mommy feels primed for some great scares.

Clayface

We’re incredibly excited to see the DCU lean directly into horror with Clayface. The trailer looks like a proper body-horror film, and we can’t wait to see what a DC horror movie looks like.

The summer horror films we return to year after year.

These are the movies that remind us of the season, warm us with nostalgia and, of course, terrify us along the way.

Fright Night

The original Fright Night helped bring the vampire into the modern suburban era, just before films like The Lost Boys, Near Dark and eventually Buffy the Vampire Slayer continued reinventing the monster for a new generation.
Between its love of horror, the vampire next door and Peter Vincent’s monster-movie past, Fright Night captures everything we love about watching monster movies during the Halloween season.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

A much more modern pick, but one that captures the feeling of Halloween incredibly well. Beginning on Halloween night, its autumn atmosphere, trick-or-treating, haunted houses, small-town setting and collection of monsters make it a perfect film to kick off the season.

Forgotten horror worth rediscovering

This month’s nightmare

Each issue includes a special tale of unease. Our story this month comes from Stephen Ohl, the writer and director behind our first feature film, Useless Humans. Stephen’s story feels like the perfect addition to our Halloween issue and captures the eerie atmosphere we all crave this time of year.

Turn down the lights, settle in, and enjoy this month’s nightmare.

By Stephen Ohl

Darkness. Light. More darkness. Then light again.

My eyes don’t open more than a sliver to let the white in. Outside of that, I can’t move anything. Or feel anything. . .

Where am I? WHAT AM I?

All I can see through the break in my lids is white light. But wait. I can hear. I CAN HEAR! I hear a busy environment. Machines. Machines and beeps. And the scuffling of shoes. Beeps and machines? I’m in a hospital! I’m in a hospital?

Then it hits me. I remember. I remember everything all at once. And it hurts. An entire life experienced, rushing back into my brain like a computer rebooting. A balloon filling with air.

I want to cry. But I can’t. I can’t cry. I can’t feel. Well. . . I can feel every thought in my head. Like a soul in a prison. Maybe that’s what it always is. Only now I can’t move. I try to scream. But I can’t. I try to take a deep breath and do my meditations, but I can’t even do that. I wish I had just died. But I didn’t. I want to die now. But I can’t.

I go back to sleep.

The next three days I drift in and out of consciousness. I’m here and then I’m somewhere else. Some sort of space between waking and dreaming. It’s like being at an airport except there are no planes. Only me and strangers. All lost, trying to get somewhere, but instead we linger in some space between spaces.

When I’m awake on the third day, I finally see and hear my wife Samantha speaking to a doctor. Doctor Jones. Jack and Elizabeth are nearby but not really listening. They’re both on their phones. Barely even in the physical realm. About as much as me.

Doctor Jones says, “You see, Mrs. Meyers, your husband appears to be somewhere between a coma and what we call Locked-In Syndrome.”

“Locked-In Syndrome?” Elizabeth questions.

“It’s a rare condition where a person is fully awake and aware. However, they cannot move or speak because all the muscles in their body are paralyzed.”

“I see,” she frowns and looks to the kids who show no reaction.

“However, most people with this condition can blink and move their eyes. Your husband appears to do that sometimes. But it’s not clear whether he’s aware or not.”

I’M AWARE. I’M HERE! I scream but it only echoes in my head.

Samantha cries while I cry internally. I took my life for granted. I took her for granted. My kids. Everything. I was selfish. I took care of me more than anyone else. My precious career. My precious hobbies. My cars. My things. Me. Me. Me. I should have been there more. Oh, please, will one of you hug me, I may not feel it, but I will be touched.

My wife tells Samantha and Jack that it’s time to leave. My wife comes to my side. Oh, thank God. She whispers in my ear, “If you’re in there. I love you. We’ll be back.” Jack touches my foot and kisses me on the forehead as he trails behind Samantha and Elizabeth. They do love me. They do?
They don’t return for a month. . .

The days are long, and the nights are longer. A nurse visits to check on me from time to time and replace my IV’s. And empty my piss and shit bags. Other than that, it’s just me and my mind. Sometimes I feel like a monk, as my mind traverses an infinite space and time between my skull and the universe. Other times the agony of a solitary confined mind makes me pray for death as opposed to health again.

But then. I notice things around the hospital at night. Objects moving without being touched. Strange noises. And then I see something that even my untethered mind of imagination doesn’t know what to do with. It’s a dark creature that lurks in the shadows. It flaps and flies like a bird but has the head of a monster with fangs, horns, and yellow eyes. Like a bat but it can only fly like a chicken for moments at a time. I think I have truly lost it, until I notice that it lingers in the rooms of the sickest patients. And once it visits them, they never last long. Could this be a demon? A grim reaper? No. It’s clear I’ve lost my mind. But I keep watching it. And more and more patients die in its presence. Would it come for me next?

Months go on and my family visits less and less. Except for Jack. He comes more. He plays me strange YouTube videos. Ones about the supernatural. Ones about ancient civilizations. And ones about conspiracies. I love them all. I love him. Then he looks at me and gives me a warning. He tells me that Samantha is seeing another man. That I’d been in the hospital three years now. NO! How could it be? HOW!? But he continues and tells me everything about his life and not to worry about him. They all miss me. But “Mom got lonely, I guess.”

Sure enough, the next time Samantha visits me she’s with her new man. James is his name. He is everything I’m not. Dark, tall, and artistic. And most importantly alive and with a functioning body. I don’t blame her. But I do hate her. Even though I’m not surprised. I wasn’t the best to her. Always criticizing. Always focused on me. Me. Me. Me. It always comes back to me.

Jack plays me a new video that day while James and Samantha drink their coffees in the corner and chat. This video is about remote viewing and astral projection. I conclude that it seems maybe I’m living in two realms right now. And that maybe I can escape my body and travel anywhere I want to in this physical realm. I start practicing nightly. It’s difficult. I can’t do it and soon give up.

Jack comes again the following week and plays me more videos. I’m happy. Until I see it. The demon flies in right behind Jack and lurks in my room, staring down at me. I’m horrified. Is it my time? I don’t mind if it’s my time, but I don’t want to go anywhere with that thing!

I keep glancing at it the whole time Jack’s with me. I relish my moments with Jack. As I know this might be the last time I see him. Jack who’s grown so much, gets up to leave and touches my feet and kisses me on the head as he always does. I think about how much I love him. And I think my goodbye as I look at the demon in the corner of the room. But when Jack exits, the demon doesn’t stay like I think it will. Instead, he flaps after Jack.

NO!!! YOU EVIL SCUM!!! NOT MY SON. NOT JACK!!

I float through the hospital and out of the doors. I float after Jack and the flapping monster. All the way to Jack’s car. He can drive now! I didn’t get a chance to teach him, but in that moment, boy am I proud of him. But the demon doesn’t care. The demon gets in the passenger seat. I fly after the moving car. As it heads into an intersection, I dive into the back seat. I look and see the demon as he reaches its talons onto Jack’s steering wheel. He’s going to crash the car!

I grab the demon, and much to its surprise, I wrestle it into the backseat. It lurches and thrashes and tries desperately to reach for Jack as it screeches a screech no animal on Earth ever could. But I hold it tight, and I think about being back in my body. I don’t know why I do, but I know I must get this yellow-eyed monster as far away from my son as possible.

All at once. I zip across the roads and highways, above the boxy houses below, through the hospital walls, and back into my useless body. It feels like a rollercoaster hitting a brick wall. For a moment my body feels every pain imaginable. It feels like my own car accident all over again. I hope I saved Jack from experiencing that too. But where’s the demon? Did I kill it? Did I save Jack?

Then. I hear it. That screech. That unholy screech. I look around the room, but I don’t see it anywhere. That’s when I realize. It’s not out there. Nope. It’s with me. In my body. We’re in here together. My thoughts become infiltrated by its thoughts. It’s pure evil and pure hell. And my thoughts battle with those I can only describe as devilish. It claws at my consciousness trying to escape. I try to astral project and escape this prison. Only when I do, it tries to leave with me. And, so, it is. I must stay here like this to protect my son forever. No problem. I will do what I should have a long time ago. I’ll do it for you, Jack. For you. You. You. You. It's only darkness now. Me and this flapping devil until the bitter end.

Stephen Ohl began his career working for director Louis Leterrier and producer Richard Gladstein.

His short White River Tales played at festivals from 2018 to 2019, winning Best Writing at Catalyst and Best Student Film at San Jose International. His feature debut, Useless Humans, was released on Showtime in 2020. His comedy series Sales Are Dope premiered in 2023 before being released as a feature on Prime Video and other streaming platforms.

Until next month, keep the lights on. . . and if you hear a knock at the door, just pray it’s trick-or-treaters and nothing more.

Sleep well.

– Kinogo Pictures