Digital Anarchy’s annual free Halloween offering is back: Ugly Box, the plugin that makes your footage look like it crawled straight out of a haunted timeline. Unlike its glamorous sibling Beauty Box, which smooths skin and hides imperfections, Ugly Box does exactly the opposite.
According to Digital Anarchy’s Jim Tierney (Chief Executive Anarchist), the plugin “uses the same tech as Beauty Box but, ya know, for dead people.” The software enhances wrinkles, blemishes, and general decrepitude through selective skin enhancement and colour correction. The result is ideal for turning your talent into witches, demons, or zombies, without the need for prosthetics or extra coffee.
Flicker Freak Joins the Party
Alongside Ugly Box, Digital Anarchy also resurrects Flicker Freak, a companion plugin that introduces chaotic, horror-style flicker into your footage. Think of it as the evil twin of their stabilising tool Flicker Free. Both plugins are available as free downloads. Additional no-cost utilities include a simple gradient generator and an SRT subtitle importer—because even monsters need captions.
For Production… or Possession
Both Ugly Box and Flicker Freak are designed for fast, real-time results across common editing platforms. Installation is straightforward, and Digital Anarchy provides short demo clips on their site showing the effects in motion. The plugins are meant primarily for fun and short-form creative use, though nothing stops the brave from dropping them into a feature-grade workflow.
As always, Digital Production reminds readers to test any plugin in a controlled environment before deploying it in production. No one wants their pipeline haunted by compatibility issues. And if you come out of Crunshtime at Halloween, you’ll propably need no further Mosnter Makeup.
Final Thought
If, after running Ugly Box on your latest portrait or horror short, you notice disappointingly little transformation… it may be time to accept the truth and invest in Beauty Box instead. And, on a personal note: Halloween is NEXT week. Strange creatures ringing your doorbell until then is just your ugly neighbours. Welcome to 2025…
