The Curious Case At 1301 is about Michael, played by Corey Maher (writer, director actor), coming home to development life and an almost empty house, except for Duke the dog, and eventually he begins to worry about his missing wife. As the day drags on Michael begins to get concerned because his wife is non-responsive to his texts and then the story goes from there as he tries to find his missing wife.
So you might think this is a drama from that synopsis, but you’d be wrong. The Curious Case At 1301 is a horror dark comedy. I mean, call me crazy but having a fight with a mailbox and yelling “Come on you son of a bitch. Give me back my wife” is kind of funny. So, the thing that I will take away from The Curious Case At 1301 is not that the horror was chilling or scary, because it wasn’t at all, but rather for an independent movie the comedic writing, tone and acting was pretty darn good.
I went there because I’ve touched on comedy in independents before on IndieMR and basically it’s really tough to pull off, so that’s why I was really impressed with how well Corey Maher was able to do such a good job on this project.
There’s really a lot I want to say about this project because I liked this project a lot, so not sure what’s gonna make it’s way out of my brain into the review. But I guess, I’m a fan of the original Ivan Reitman’s Ghostbusters, Sami Raimi’s The Evil Dead, Joe Dante’s The ‘Burbs and to me The Curious Case At 1301 had elements of those projects for sure. Once I started vibing in that direction, sitting back and watching this project was a breeze and fun.
Don’t get me wrong, this project is not those other projects, but it had elements to that style so I rather enjoyed the ride. I definitely would have done some other things that I think could have made the final project so much better, but the fact that this project got my brain going in a direction on how could it been better is a good thing.
On that note unfortunately, I think there were some missed comedic opportunities along the way and actually the ending kind of fell a little flat. During the garage scene I thought we were gonna go full blown The Evil Dead, but instead of grabbing the chainsaw, unfortunately Michael grabbed a crowbar. I’m just gonna chalk that choice up to an indie budget and other constraints, instead of I guess technically it makes more sense to pry open a demonic mailbox with a crowbar, so will let it slide, but man Michael ripping up the neighborhood with a chainsaw looking for his wife could have been fun.
But yeah, despite the missed opportunities, overall I would really recommend checking out The Curious Case At 1301 and already have a couple friends I want to tell about the project.
Overall this project was kind of a ‘tweener project technically if I had to describe its look. It was very clean cinematography wise and every action and object in each shot was shown for a reason, but it wasn’t an overly polished production. It’s the kind of production that after you watch it you feel like you could go film that type of movie, until you start to try and realize how much work actually went into The Curious Case At 1301.
So yeah, great job everybody that was involved with this project. If you get the chance crack open a couple cold LumberSnacks and check out The Curious Case At 1301.