Before Skinamarink: Heck — Kyle Edward Ball’s Free 30-Minute Nightmare Short That’s Even Scarier
Kyle Edward Ball released a 30-minute horror short called Heck that predates his 2023 feature Skinamarink. Heck is available for free on YouTube, and it grew out of Ball’s series of short videos on his YouTube channel, Bitesize Nightmares, which ran from 2017 to 2020.
What Heck is about
Heck is a half-hour, low-budget short that follows a character labeled “Boy” after he “wakes up in the middle of night to the sound of his mom’s television blaring.” The Boy wanders a house while calling out “Mommy” and appearing uncertain about where to go. The film uses title cards that count time, including the exact cards: “2 sleeps”; “5 sleeps”; “49 sleeps”; “314 sleeps.”
Format and style
Ball made Heck using techniques similar to his earlier videos: locked-off shots of interior spaces, close-ups with strong color casts, white noise, and pixelated imagery. The short features Ball’s narration and a deliberately slow pacing across its 30-minute runtime. These elements were also present in the Bitesize Nightmares series, which adapted viewers’ submitted dreams into short film segments.
Connections to Bitesize Nightmares
The short is an extended version of the themes Ball explored on his YouTube channel. Bitesize Nightmares ran in earnest from 2017 to 2020 and presented viewer-submitted dreams as brief visual pieces that combined ambient sound and static camera compositions.
Where to watch
Heck is streaming on YouTube. Below is the direct video link.
Ball’s YouTube channel is available at Bitesize Nightmares. Meanwhile, the feature Skinamarink (2023) can be rented through various services; one listing for rental availability is on JustWatch.
Credits and details
Title: Heck
Creator/Director: Kyle Edward Ball
Runtime: ~30 minutes
Related work: Skinamarink (feature film, 2023)
Source channel: Bitesize Nightmares (2017–2020)
Heck and Ball’s earlier shorts use specific visual and audio techniques to present short-form dream adaptations, and the short remains available on YouTube for anyone who wants to watch it.
