Our Homemade Horror Turned Comedy

So, it all started with a vacation trip. My mother and her husband rented out this small island (No, they're not super rich or something. We live in florida, many renting opportunities). I was allowed to bring a friend, and I chose my childhood friend since second grade, Kaileah. I believe we had just graduated high school at this point. We were initially excited, because... well, the obvious! An island all to ourselves! It sounds exciting and fun. It was only a couple hours drive away. We didn't know what to expect but we figured it was going to be awesome!

So, first thing we come across once we park is the supposed dock. It wasn't really a dock, just a boat tied to the edge of the water. The boat was small, and for me, that's scary when you're going out on the ocean. But, I got over it. So, we get to the island via the boat, and honestly, the place is beautiful. Greenery, a big rental house, the beach. It was definitely an amazing site. Unfortunately, its physical beauty wore off not long after our arrival once we became more acquainted. The house had NO AC. And in Florida? You need AC, period. There were fans and windows, but good God, it wasn't enough. The wifi and TV were spotty, so not much entertainment there. And then the little sectioned off area on the beach to swim only came up to our knees, which is not enough depth to swim comfortably. Our other options of swimming were jumping off the dock, but there were literal sightings of sharks there before so the most we did was jump in and get right back out! So we couldn't even enjoy any swimming. And being that it was a bit creepy at night, we would run into the little forested area and basically freak ourselves out because there was no lighting but at the house and outdoor cooking area. There was also an area on the island that reminded us of a scene from a scary movie we saw together, which is probably what inspired us to do what I will mention in a moment. Basically, we needed entertainment. All of this combined made us quite bored. Yes, the island was relaxing, but there wasn't much to actively do, and we couldn't even stay inside comfortably because it was too hot. Eventually, we decided to come up with our own entertainment.

We decided to make a movie! And what type of movie belongs on an 'abandoned island'? A horror movie of course! So we wrote a script (that we barely followed) and begged our fellow islanders (my mom, her husband, and my brother) to join in and be in our movie! They pretty much said no, but we got them to help a few times throughout, including some shots without their knowing. It took us only two days to record and edit it. At some point we realized it wasn't turning so much into a horror as it was a weird comedy. But, that didn't stop us! Though it probably should have because the movie is just horrible. Everything was against us when making this movie. Our actors (my family) wouldn't follow our script or even help, we only had our old phones to record and both of us had little to no space on the phones to even record. It got to the point where we could only record for, I think, 15 seconds at a time! Though we spent most of our childhood in performing arts our acting was horrendous. And, our imagination could have been better. It was fun and a great way to pass the time but wow, the movie was obviously done by amateurs. We even did a credits and bloopers part in the movie. My mother's husband wasn't in the film at all, but said he wanted to be, so we added him into the credits at the end. Honestly, it's one of the funniest things you'll ever watch. Me writing about it does it no justice, so I attached the video above.

This is what happens when kids get bored and think they're creative! They do things they actually have no experience in and think they're geniuses. It's one of my favorite memories though. I can always count on watching our movie and getting a good laugh. We showed it to all our family and friends and their responses are always hilarious to watch because the movie is so poorly edited, the acting is so bad, and even the sound sucks. We had to edit some sound in because it didn't come out or the video cut it off and we didn't want to re-record. It's crazy, but if you don't believe me, watch the video!

The premise of the story is basically that us two friends decided to stay on this island for a vacation but creepy things keep happening and my brother, who plays the crazy killer, ends up killing my character! We snuck clips of him moving around and added it in to seem like he was always there and we didn't notice. Most of the clips we couldn't get shot more than once because nobody would cooperate! My brother would only record the scene where he chased Kaileah once, so you see him chasing her for a moment, and then we had to record her running by herself. And of course, we had to add in the old 'falling down while running' cliche! Kaileah pushed for the scene but did not want to fall down in the sand so she made sure she fell on the grassy area. I understood her reason, but it made the scene look even more awkward because of how she had to fall in the grass. We would have to film each other separately at times because we only had ourselves to record. The scene where you see the bell being rung, you can clearly hear Kaileah whispering to "do it again" and my mother in the background yelling "stop it!" as we had rung it a few times previously. We just couldn't catch a break. After my brother chased Kaileah down, she found a woman on the beach and begged for help. The woman, my mother, agreed to help her and creepily takes her away while whispering, "everything's gonna be alright", which we had to have Kaileah whisper it again and edit it in because you could barely hear my mother. At the end, you see that Kaileah was taken in by the killer and the woman, who was in cahoots with the crazed man, and she stays there till this day.

Following this are the credits, featuring all of us, even my mother's husband who wanted to be added in even though he was not in the movie. The only time he appeared was in the bloopers at the end where he walked in on a scene we were recording. The other bloopers consisted of our opening scene where it was hard to keep a straight face, the end scene where my mom improvised petting Kaileah's shoulder and it made my brother laugh, and the scene where I screamed and Kaileah couldn't stop laughing while running down the stairs. It's less than seven minutes long, but it's pretty complete, I think, for a short movie. It's horrible but hilarious, and amazing considering how little we had to work with. I hope you enjoy our movie and find it as funny as we did!