Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!
Low-budget filmmaking is aways interesting to me because it often requires the filmmaker to be a lot more creative with how they tell the story. I remember seeing an interview with Sam Raimi talking about this, saying that with the first Evil Dead movies, they had to figure out creative ways to get the shots they wanted, but with a budget, you just throw money at the problem. A Horrible Way to Die is a film that honestly pushes the limit of what can/should be expected in low-budget filmmaking.
I genuinely don’t want to come off as a snob here, because for whatever reason, director Adam Wingard—who has done Godzilla movies—has evidently decided that “low budget” also means “amateurish.” Now, to be fair, this was an early film in his filmography, and it wasn’t until he’d been around for a bit that he got to do things like Godzilla vs. Kong. That might explain some of this, but it doesn’t explain the fact that he seems to be dead set against 1) letting the camera sit still for 10 seconds and 2) focus. I mean that second part literally—it’s not that the film isn’t focusing on a story; it’s that the camera is literally out of focus in a lot of shots.
