[yasr_overall_rating]
Jenny’s quiet evening at home watching a scary movie is interrupted by a stalker who can’t quite master the art of text messaging.
As “The Horrors of AutoCorrect” opens, young Jenny (Jaquelyn Fabian) is home alone eating popcorn and watching an old black and white scary movie while her parents are gone out for the night. Sound familiar? Of course it does and if you know horror movies, then “Halloween” and “Scream” both come to mind, as well as any number of countless ripoffs.
As Jenny is engrossed with the movie on TV, she receives an unexpected phone call from a private number. Initially, she doesn’t answer but when her phone rings again, she decides to pick it up. Naturally, this being a scary movie, she can’t hear anybody on the other end of the phone and just as she is about to hang up, a strange man’s voice becomes audible.
When the caller knows her by name, Jenny thinks she’s being prank-called and when he seems totally incapable of frightening her, she tells him to text her, like any normal person. This is where the fun begins. We have all sent texts to family members or friends only for our (not so) smartphones to automatically correct a word we were trying to incorporate into our conversation and change it completely.
I have read some absolutely hilarious autocorrect conversations online and this movie takes that exact theme and puts it to good use. While the stranger is sending threatening texts to Jenny, telling her “I’m going to ducking kill you,” Jenny can’t help but crack up. And neither can we. Obviously, this angers the would-be serial killer and as he becomes more and more frustrated, his texts become funnier and funnier.
The film caused me to laugh out loud several times but the only issue I had with it, was its length. At just a little over five minutes long, it barely had time to establish the familiar horror setting before it ended. A feature-length film wouldn’t be able to hold interest on this topic but I think another 10 minutes or so could have introduced some additional outrageous autocorrects that would have made the movie even more entertaining.
As it stands, “The Horrors of AutoCorrect” is short and sweet but sometimes, a short movie can be too short, leaving you to want more and in this instance, a little longer could have worked wonders.
“The Horrors of AutoCorrect” is streaming free online via Eli Roth’s Crypt TV and you can watch it below in its entirety
