A widow is blackmailed by her dead husband.


THE WAGES OF SIN is used with permission from Gunner Willis. Learn more at   / just_gubnet  .


A group of local children is out wandering when they come across a local woman sleeping in a dug-up grave. They awaken the priest of a nearby church, who is passed out drunk in the parish. The priest knows the woman, whose name is Martha, and discovers she's digging up her dead husband Donnie's grave. Donnie has apparently come back from the dead and told Martha to dig up his grave -- or else he will kill her.

The priest tries to talk sense into Martha, but Martha is convinced that Donnie will have his revenge on her if she doesn't follow his command. What follows in the conversation between Martha and her priest is equal parts mystery, mayhem, murder... and a little bit of mystical intervention in the form of fate.

Directed and written by Gunner Willis, this Southern Gothic-tinged horror short is both a cleverly nostalgic throwback to classics like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD and a modern melding of dark comedy and demons both literal and figurative.

Shot in textured black-and-white with a style that nods to the classic, the storytelling is woven like a yarn, where the color of the characters, setting and plot matter more than the initial logic. The film's setup is much like setting up a joke, as in "What did the drunk priest say when he caught the grieving widow digging up her husband's grave?" But after enjoying some flourishes of oddball comedy, the narrative gets down to business, parsing out a deeper, darker tale behind the farcical beginnings.

We find out the widow isn't grieving but is terrified of her husband Donnie who was likely abusive to her in the past. And the priest leans on a philosophy that's more fatalistic than faith in navigating life's travails. In attempting to get Martha to stop digging up Donnie's grave, he advises letting a coin toss help her with her choice to listen to Donnie or let go of his control over her -- because the act of throwing up a coin clarifies what she truly believes or wants. But letting go and moving past her husband's controlling shadow is harder than anyone thinks -- until fate catches up with her.

Being a comedy, THE WAGES OF SIN shambles and pratfalls into a confrontation. And being a horror film, it reveals that its seemingly shaggy and loose approach to storytelling is more precise than initially seems, with a conclusion that self-assuredly knocks down all of its carefully set-up blocks and builds to an outlandish, suspenseful end. No man, it seems, escapes judgment -- for no one can predict how it will be delivered, and through what means.