Stabbed 2

Read the screenplay (PDF) — Screenplay dated July 9, 2014.

A couple pranks each other on April Fools' Day with terrifying consequences.

Stabbed 2 is a short film based on the Stab movies and a sequel to the earlier short Stabbed. A couple pranks each other on April Fools' Day, and it goes very wrong.

It is April Fools' Day. Doug and his girlfriend Leah are on the couch watching a horror movie on TV. The movie on the screen is New Year's Resolution, StabMovies.com's own short from January 2015. Doug says these movies are not scary at all. They go back and forth about whether anyone still makes scary movies, and Leah says the only thing that gets her is a cheap jump scare, like a killer popping out of nowhere or a boyfriend who pulls out a knife and stabs his girlfriend.

Doug takes the hint. He pulls out a fake knife and fake stabs Leah to death, then yells April Fools. Leah tells him it was not funny, but he pushes her to admit it was a good one.

Then Leah pulls out a real knife and stabs Doug again and again on the couch. When he asks what she is doing, she tells him it is revenge for sleeping with her sister. She knew all along. Once Doug is dead, Leah says she really does feel better.

Her phone rings. The caller tells her she made a mess. When she asks if he can see her, he says he is standing outside her door and shows her he is right there. He tells her to open the door and find out what he wants, or she can die right now too. Leah gives in and says she will open the door.

Ghost Face pops up and slits Leah's throat. She sinks to the floor while he watches. After the story ends, the YouTube upload runs a blooper reel from the shoot, with the actors breaking, missed lines and takes of the blood effects.

Release & Reception

• Studio: StabMovies.com (IMDb lists the production company as JDuDs Productions)
• Distributor: StabMovies.com YouTube channel (free to watch)

The 15-second teaser went up on August 3, 2014. Its description calls the film a sequel to the earlier short Stabbed.

The full short went up on the StabMovies.com YouTube channel on March 31, 2015, the night before April Fools' Day. The upload is stamped 9:00 PM Pacific, which is midnight April 1 on the East Coast. It is titled Stabbed 2 | Short Film | Full Movie and Bloopers. By September 2026 it had 27,157 views. The teaser had 2,274, the commentary version 1,663 and the Behind the Mask episode 736.

IMDb lists Stabbed 2 (tt4342024) as a 2015 United States horror short in English, released April 1, 2015. In September 2026 it had a 6.3 user rating from 30 ratings and no user reviews.

The script came out in the StabMovies.com Short Film Collection on November 2, 2019.

Cast

Crew

Production

Stabbed 2 was the April entry in 12 Months of Terror. StabMovies.com announced that plan on January 13, 2015: one horror short every month of the year, most of them tied to that month's holiday. Joshua Patrick Dudley said the idea came out of a talk with Rachel Arnold, his executive producer, about trying other kinds of horror and giving viewers more original content alongside the Stab movies. In his Behind the Mask interview he says 12 Months of Terror was never finished and only got as far as May.

The teaser came out months before 12 Months of Terror was announced.

Chris Dube came back for the part of Doug. Dudley says they were excited to have him because they had not had him in anything in a long time, and that he is a lot of fun to work with on set. Cynthia Phan was new. She auditioned because she wanted to be part of the Stab movies, and after a screen test they thought she was great. Dudley says she brought the same energy to the set that she brought to her audition, and that she and Dube got along well.

The whole short was shot in one night at a friend's apartment. It is the same apartment used for the opening scene of Stab 7: Knife of the Hunter. The only people there were Dudley, Chris Dube, the friend whose place it was and Phan, who Dudley says was 18 at the time. With nobody else helping, Dudley ran the camera himself. He calls it an easy shoot. The actors came prepared, knew their lines and needed very little direction. When he wrote the script he expected it to run longer, but they played off each other so well that it went by quickly.

The close shots of Ghost Face against a white wall were filmed after the rest of the short, at Dudley's home. He admits he always forgets to film himself in the costume when he is also running the shoot. He says it edited together better than he expected. In the commentary he also says one shot of the Ghost Face mask was reused from an earlier film. He first says Stab 5, then corrects himself to Stab 7.

The making of the short is covered in Behind the Mask, Part 14: Stabbed 2, which premiered June 24, 2020 as part of the StabMovies.com: Behind the Mask documentary.

Music

IMDb credits Joshua Patrick Dudley as composer. No songs are listed in the YouTube credits or on the StabMovies.com page.

Filming locations

• A friend's apartment: The whole story. The same apartment was used for the opening scene of Stab 7: Knife of the Hunter.
• Joshua Patrick Dudley's home: Ghost Face close-ups against a white wall, shot after the main night
• Manchester and Bedford, New Hampshire: Filming, as listed by StabMovies.com

Effects and makeup

The only real trouble on the shoot was the blood. They wanted the short to be bloody, and Doug gets stabbed a lot. A blood pump squirted blood while he was being stabbed, and some of it went places it should not have. They laid tarps under Chris Dube to protect the couch, but the tarps made so much noise that they got pulled or tucked away. The friend's couch ended up covered in blood, and they had to scrub spots off his floor.

Doug's stabbing uses one of what Dudley calls their cardboard box stabbings. The actor's shirt goes over a cardboard box so it can be stabbed with a real knife.

Leah's throat slit had no prosthetic. Cynthia Phan held a tube, or a couple of tubes, in her hand, and blood was pumped through so it squeezed out and ran down her fingers. It was hard to get right, and the first take ruined her sweater. In the finished short the slit itself is done digitally, and then it cuts to a shot where she is already bleeding.

Phan had a hard time with the fake blood's smell. Dudley describes it as a latex smell that came up into her face as the blood pumped out. The blooper reel ends on her apologizing for the smell.

Props and costumes

Fake knife for Doug's prank. Dudley says it kept sticking on set, so the actors kept poking each other with it by accident.

Real knife for Leah's attack, used on the cardboard box under Doug's shirt.

Ghost Face costume and mask, worn by Joshua Patrick Dudley, who also did the voice.

A TV playing New Year's Resolution in the background of the couch scene.

Coca-Cola cans. Dudley points out in the commentary that a can on the table disappears and reappears between shots. He drinks a lot of Coca-Cola and was working alone, so he says little mistakes like that turn up all through their movies.

The killers

Deaths

STABFLIX

Watch the film

Playlists

• The bonus features playlist

Gallery

Posters

Stills

Promotional Images

Behind the Scenes