Before making his mark on the Evil Dead franchise with new movie Evil Dead Rise, director Lee Cronin cut his teeth on a mixture of commercials and short films. That early career work eventually led to Cronin’s feature debut The Hole in the Ground in 2019, an A24-released horror movie that soon led to Cronin landing the gig directing Evil Dead Rise.
Cronin directed a handful of short films between 2004 and his feature debut, but it’s 2013’s Ghost Train that garnered the most recognition for the Irish filmmaker. In addition to being in Official Competition in over 50 film festivals worldwide, the horror short notably won a handful of awards, including the Méliès D’Argent for Best European Fantastic Short Film at the Molins de Rei Horror Film Festival in 2014. Ghost Train also won the Audience Award for Best Short Film at the Ithaca International Fantastic Film Festival during the same year.
Playing out between two different periods of time, 30 years apart, Cronin’s Ghost Train is an ambitious short film that’s primarily set at a long-abandoned haunted attraction.
In Ghost Train, written & directed by Cronin, “Once a year, estranged brothers Michael and Peter make a reluctant pilgrimage to the old fairground where their friend Sam went missing three decades ago. This time, Michael has a secret to confess.”
The slow-burn short spends most of its brief runtime developing the characters, teasing out the mystery of the haunted attraction and the titular Ghost Train. Cronin and his team built an incredibly eye-catching exterior for the dark ride attraction, while leaving the interior entirely to the imagination. The short is much closer in tone to The Hole in the Ground than Evil Dead Rise, two vastly different horror experiences that have really shown how versatile Cronin is as a filmmaker. What’s next? An aquatic horror movie for New Line titled Thaw!
While you wait, take a ride on Lee Cronin’s Ghost Train below.
John Keville and Ulla Simonen produced Ghost Train.
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