501 Days is a charmingly ambitious short film that follows James (Laurence Patrick) and Ellen (Hannah O’Leary), a married couple trying to become the first people to orbit Mars. However, when they lose contact with Earth and the International Space Station 170 days into their journey, the two must figure out how to finish their mission alone. The film’s ambition lies in its low budget aesthetic mixed with sharp digital effects: at £ 8000, director Thomas Hockey manages to create well-conceived space odyssey, in part because the protagonists never leave the space capsule. Instead, the short creates an intimate claustrophobia cockpit from which this happy couple turned space pioneers have to make life and death decisions.

The film jumps between the “present”—the endless intimate night of the shuttle—, and the months leading up to the mission, in which we see how James and Ellen planned their dream of being the first to orbit Mars. By establishing their seemingly long-time, intimate connection, the film gives us space to care about what may be the last two humans around. It’s both a story of the future of humanity as well as the love, friendship, camaraderie, and quest for knowledge that make us human.

The cockpit—the setting for the majority of the film—was actually built in Laurence Patrick’s spare bedroom, and the décor is more sparse than technical. Although there are the requisite switches, knobs, and buttons, the washed out 70s color palette and tight, blurry shots create a dreamy interior in which the rest of the worlds may not matter as much. The spare cockpit is marked by only a few kitschy objects: an old lamp, a maneki-neko (or a waving Japanese cat figurine) lodged between the two consoles, and a baseball cap. But the low budget interior is a wonderful contrast to the astronauts’ views of Mars out the window, and the movie’s judicious use of special effects underscore the dreamscape that is life in space.

501 Days does have a couple of elements that feel a bit like cheating, however. It raises a few mysteries that it doesn’t solve, which leaves the narrative a little too unfocused. The film’s concentration on milieu is lovely and leaves the audience both nostalgic and hopeful. While it doesn’t tell us what’s going on (or really give us speak to consider the protagonists’ choices), it nonetheless captures some of the beauty, awe, and quietude of the boundless dark that would be the constant companion of human space travel.

Guiliano Saade’s short film Empty is almost a one-act play; it takes place in one setting, in almost unedited time, with only four characters. In the story, a drunken, broke guy named Chico won’t leave the bar operated by the owner, Mr. Nelson, who only wants to go home to sleep. After enough shots of liquor to down a rhino, Chico leaves, but then he immediately returns. He can’t go home; he claims that there’s nothing out there past the bar. Mr. Nelson is incredulous and assumes Chico just want to finish off the bottle. They fight, and Mr. Nelson injured, perhaps mortally. Chico continues to hide out, even as a woman seeks help and there seems to be a shootout down the street. Empty never lets us leave the bar, so we can’t actually know what’s outside.

The film’s most interesting structural element is the way it keeps to the interior of the bar. Because we are limited to one narrow room, our perspective of the situation becomes increasingly paranoid and muddled. With the exception of one gruesome death, most of the action takes place outside. We can hear but not see what’s going on. It leaves us unsure: Is there still an outside? Who’s being shot? Is it mass chaos? Linked as we are to Chico’s point of view, we never know for sure. The story makes it seem like that emptiness is just an absence of light from a burnt-out streetlamp, but maybe he’s right and the world no longer exists. The eerie, dim fluorescent lights of the bar only serve to emphasize Chico’s paranoia. The entire world of the film looks like it’s out to get him.

Stories that are so essentially framed in one time and one place usually work by expanding characters and making them dynamic. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case with Empty and is, in fact, its most problematic element. We aren’t able to really care about Chico because we know nothing about him; in this way, his arc never really becomes interesting. Less like a story and more like a series of irregular events, Chico’s tale makes it hard to connect with him, even though we share his physical point of view.

Squares begins as an enigma: We see a short glimpse of an inert woman’s toenail polish, a ringing phone, a clock that goes back in time, and we hear a disembodied voice which appears unconnected to what we see. Instead of matching the image and soundtrack, Squares delivers us a discontinuous sensory experience, coupled with the eerie sense of impending disaster.

But this is not a film that ever commits to its plot; rather, Squares uses fractured images and voices to ask questions about how humans experience the most important moments in time. In the film, Noah (Aaron Fontaine) is an itinerate backpacker who “always lives in the present.” He wanders the streets, tries to call someone from a pay phone (the dead woman?), and steals some snacks from a corner store, and we are left with a series of questions: Did he kill the dead woman, is he avoiding the police? Who is she?

Slowly, the film’s narrative unfolds as a love story. At some point, Noah and his girlfriend (Sophie Khan Levy) met and fell in love. But something goes wrong, and we see him calling her from a payphone and she is already dead. He appears to live outside of linear time, reliving all of these moments without being about to change their outcome. Metaphorically and literally, he is always in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, he eventually connects with Anton (Antony Acheampong), another man who appears to live outside of linear time. Anton gives Noah a book that just may fix whatever has gone wrong.

Even upon re-watching the film, the plot is never made explicitly clear. It’s a puzzle that never explicitly fits together; however, that’s not the point of the film. It’s a testament to the director Bernard Kordiesh’s gorgeous imagery and editing style that the concrete plot doesn’t really seem to matter. Instead, Squares brings together visual and aural images to give an emotional and sensory experience that doesn’t need specific answers. Beautifully shot and extremely well acted, the captures the excitement, romance, loss, and longing that emerge in every love story. At the same time, it infuses the images with tension and frustration: how do we fix the mistakes that define us? While the film doesn’t tell us that we can, it evokes the possibilities of hope. It the shows us a fantasy of re-living the best moments in the past and fixing the worst ones, and in doing so creating new possibilities for old mistakes.

The Shadow of Two Flies Upon a Pin, a low-budget interpretation of Nikolai Gogol’s short story “The Overcoat,” is an appealing marriage of old tales and new aesthetics. In part, this charm comes from the choice of story: “The Overcoat” is not a complex narrative but rather a tale of tropes and types, and thus doesn’t require extensive character development or human interaction. A fable wrapped in the cloak of a short story, the tale is well suited to the small budget, short form.

The narrative is told through a frame story, in which a young man with a new job tells his mother about his position’s previous occupant. He describes an older desk clerk who lives a Spartan life, with his only item of material pleasure being a worn, tattered overcoat. When he accidentally mars the overcoat, he is devastated to learn that it is beyond repair. He meets with his tailor to construct a new one and learns to live an even more meager existence in order to pay for the new coat. After getting a raise and receiving his new coat, the elderly man finally finds himself more popular among his colleagues, but his pleasures are fleeting. He dies that night, in a conflict in which his coat is stolen. The clerk disappears into death, as his associates soon forget about him. His spirit hasn’t forgotten about the coat, however, and returns to haunt the city looking for it.

In a world in which fast fashion has eradicated the tailor-made coat, Gogol’s story is too anachronistic for contemporary sensibilities. Smartly, director Raymond Zrike plays off the story’s temporal displacement; the milieu is sparse, with stark black and white photography and an almost empty milieu. A simple desk stands in for the office, a table for the old man’s living area, and a bed for his sleeping space. The emptiness successfully creates the film’s fabulist feeling, and the tight close-ups serve to augment the elderly clerk’s elation and despair. Even the tiny, contemporary touches (a digital camera, modernist apartment stairs) serve to underscore the story’s unreality and timelessness. The filmmaker’s youth is evident, however, in incorporating too many historical styles into the piece. The film loses its grace in shaking cameras, superimpositions, and chiaroscuro lighting, and there is entirely too much time spent on the frame story, which drags at the end. Despite these flaws, the Shadow of Two Flies upon a Pin is an ambitious project produced with (and on) very little, and demonstrates a wonderful filmic sensibility rarely seen, even in older and more mature filmmakers.

If you’re going to attempt to kill people by burying them alive, make sure to bury them deep. And really, you can never bury your victim deep enough, so maybe keep a shovel in the trunk of your car? In the short film Pedestrian, there doesn’t appear to be a “deep enough” for the protagonist’s conscience. Tanya Vasquez-Bodden plays an anonymous driver who has had one too many “cocktails” before hitting the road, and most like a couple on the road as well. After she hits a young woman (Ricki-Lynn Berkoski), she panics and chooses to bury her in the woods to conceal her crime. However, as she attempts to shove dirt over the young woman’s unconscious body, the woman wakes up, begging for help. She ignores her second chance at calling 911, however, and physically suffocates the woman into unconsciousness.

Back at her car, however, the driver learns that she perhaps didn’t bury the woman deep enough. As she sits in the driver’s seat, a dirty arm wraps around her neck, strangling her. After escaping from the car, she runs back to the shallow grave and digs up the remnants of the figure she left behind, who appears to be still ambulatory and out for revenge.

The film’s successes stem from its genuinely creepy premise, sophisticated effects, and rather refreshing ending. Vasquez-Bodden effectively embodies a woman who is both horrible selfish and wracked with guilt. She tearfully and profusely apologizes, even as straddles the semi-conscious girl and cruelly smothers her, and is quite convincing as someone who is so self-interested that murder seems an appropriate response to evade jail time. While the film doesn’t ask us to sympathize with this callous murderer, it does humanize her. In addition, the film’s effects display a subtly unusual in a student film. The effects convey eeriness without overdoing current trends in horror. But the film’s charm really comes through at the end, when the third character (Roger Greco) arrives to give a rather unexpected ending.

However, the main character’s last words of the film, “What do you want?” end up echoed in the minds of the viewers. The film has a hard time with the victim’s motivations and desires, which leaves a void at the end of the film. Does she want revenge? To be a murderer herself? Whether legitimate, unthinkable, or schlocky, short horror films usually have some sort of ethical or moral quandary in their stories. Pedestrian leaves us without a moral point, and maybe without even a practical one.

Subtle camera work and sharp editing give the short film The Other Woman (2016) its eerie sensibility and unnerving effect. The film’s setting, place, and characters are quite simple: it’s morning, and two lovers (Kelsey Bahr and Zaid Valez) chat in bed before they get up for the day, flirting with each other and relishing in the high of the night before. As the story progresses, it becomes apparent that they are quite new to each other. They are not long-term partners but still exist in that nebulous space after newly connecting. The woman offers the man coffee, gets up, and prepares coffee in the kitchen. She makes it, notices a message from the man on her cell phone, and then slides back into bed with him. Then, the film repeats the scene, again and again, with subtle distinctions in the framing and editing.

In each articulation of the scene, the camera draws closer and closer to the couples’ faces and uses sharper, more staccato cuts to make the film appear frantic. Although the film draws from previous shots, more and more of the conversation is left out.
The film’s insistence of the reiterations without explanation unnerves the viewer. Then, there is a moment of difference that throws the repetition out of whack. As the woman grabs the cup and begins to return to the bedroom, the coffee is too hot. From there, a cup breaks, she pauses to clean up the spilled liquid, and events take a turn.

Importantly, the characters themselves are neither interesting nor sympathetic. They look generic, as if they could be interchanged for any other pair of white, American college graduates. This blankness is reflected in the film’s setting, which is sparse and neutral. Similarly, their repartee is uninteresting and banal (as probably most people’s pillow talk would be if it were secretly recorded; there’s nothing less interesting than lovers’ intimate talk). But their mundane banter and silly flirtation make the repetitions all that eerier. If this conversation is reiterate here, multiple times, perhaps it is because this conversation is being repeated in different bedrooms all over the country.

The film’s greatest problem lies in its ending, which attempts to solve the reiterations using psychology. Given the psychological motivation that the film gives the woman, the ending seems a little bit of an overreach, quite a bit implausible, and even little bit sexist. As such, the point that is supposed to the most unnerving becomes less chilling than the events and stylizations that lead up to it. It’s a shame, because if the filmmakers were to remove the motivation, the story would maintain its creepiness right up until the credits. This is where a lit bit of Faulkner may be appreciated.

Hollywood stars have always led both public and private lives. Fans have been insistent that stars’ images match the glamour of the cinema, and stars’ very livelihoods rely on being in the tabloids, dating their co-stars, and mirroring Hollywood glamour in their day-to-day lives. In private, their lives have been much more complicated. Years later stories have emerged: of messy break-ups, affairs, and, of course, bearding (or straight relationship that hides being gay). Gays and lesbians have often taken on beards, finding either opposite sex gays to enter into marriages of convenience with, or otherwise ostensibly living as a straight person so that they could remain popular public figures. During the twentieth century and even into the twenty-first, many stars hid their gayness or bisexuality from the public because the consequences of doing otherwise would end a career. In some cases, public acknowledgment even culminated in violence: William Haines was attacked by an angry mob, while Mexican-American actor Ramon Novarro was beaten to death.

Silent (2016) shows a moment in the lives of two silent film stars whose sexual preference is kept invisible. In the beginning, two men lie in bed together before they separate for a publicity event. William, the already established star, attempts to school the younger Carter in the importance of giving good public face. He seems more world-weary, while the younger, more passionate actor seems less interested in what the rest of the world thinks. He does, however, succumb to the seemingly unavoidable need to separate, and the two attend the event separately.

Ironically, the first part of Silent is dominated by constant talking. William and Carter can’t seem to stop discussing things; this bedroom is a space of free discourse. In bed, between kisses, they lament the structures of the modern world that keep them separate. The younger one begs the older to stay, just for a while longer, while the older waxes on about his rise to stardom. He tells the younger about how glorious fame and fortune is, and how he even envies the younger because his star is on the rise while the elder’s one is waning. At first, while the two are in bed, it seems impossible to place the film in time, but later the film elegantly places the film in the silent era. As the two move to get dressed in their event finery, they slide into the old-timey, full-bodied underwear appropriate to that era. As they put on the outmoded clothing, they also dress in the customs of the time. They enter a world in which homosexuality is covered, rendered invisible, and isolated. Once the two separate, the Silent enacts a split screen, which is a smart way of shifting from the constant stream of dialogue to the primarily visual end of the film.

The film has some challenges with the setting and mise-en-scene, which looks a bit too contemporary and feels like a little bit of a trick. There are, of course, many challenges to creating dialogue for a historical film, especially one that deals with such a secret world, and the film’s somewhat contemporary dialogue can come off as clunky. However, the film draws you in; its lack of dialogue in the final scene creates a melancholy, defeated ending.

“If everyone is special, then no one is special,” claims Young Blood’s cynical, ambitious narrator, describing with boredom and disdain the world in which he lives. In Young Blood, everyone has a superpower, although most of them are fairly banal. A waitress disappears after taking a food order, while another gangster lights a cigarette with his thumb. Johnny, the film’s protagonist, has a more interesting superpower. He can resurrect from the dead. Johnny wants to use this power to move in up in local gangster Stalwart’s esteem. The opportunity arises when one of Stalwart’s packages goes missing, and Johnny takes it upon himself to retrieve it. While Johnny is able to return the package, Stalwart is nonetheless suspicious of the younger man’s motives.

Young Blood cleverness comes from absolutely irritating and egotistical the film’s anti-hero is. For most cinematic and televisual superheroes, with great power comes great responsibility. Because everyone in Young Blood has powers, magical abilities are not illustrative of an individual’s moral superiority. Rather, they are simply part of the landscape. Johnny certainly doesn’t see his power as a reason to make the world a better place. In fact, powers make him hubristic and stupid. His voice over is rather absurd, filled with clichés that masquerade as serious thoughts. Although his power is not directly discernible, he is nonetheless unsuspicious of others whose powers are also not immediately visible. When Stalwart says he doesn’t have an interesting or unique power, the younger man believes him immediately. Because Johnny is so impressed with himself and his plan to ingratiate himself into Stalwart’s inner circle, he can’t see that Stalwart isn’t buying what he’s selling.

The camerawork and editing serve to underscore Johnny’s egotism and absurdity. The movie shows the heist twice, once through Johnny’s perspective and once through Stalwarts. In the second, Johnny’s self-serving expression serves to foreshadow is ultimate downfall. The quick dialogue and deep color accentuate the film’s darkly comedic sensibility, as does the way that superpowers are embedded into the film’s landscape. These special powers are integral to the film’s themes, however, the are not the focus of its narrative. In fact, the character’s powers serve to illustrate how things mostly stay the same. In this way, Young Blood is a bit of an anti-Avengers. No one becomes less self-serving, more generous, or smarter; heroes are shortsighted and villains are petty. There are no powers, according to the film, which can make humanity better. Powers simply sink to the levels of those who have them.

Border worlds are by nature ambiguous spaces. While they illustrate firm divisions (one side is France while the other is Germany, for example), they are also places in which laws change and the rules are more permeable. In Europe, those borders—between the European Union and non-EU countries, between those in and outside of the Eurozone, and even at the borders of countries within the EU—have also become places of suspicion and violence. The beautifully shot and sensually intimate film Roxy (2016) sheds light on this world at the margins, a place for foreigners, for the poor, and for outsiders.

In a dilapidated trailer on the German/Luxembourg border, a client violently attacks an aging prostitute. A young man, who has parked his car near the trailer, hears the scuffle and comes to the woman’s aid. As the two talk in the trailer, they discover that they actually are already intimately connected. She talks to the young man in Luxembourgish, not German, in a place where small shifts in language speak volumes. Roxy’s heartwarming reveal, as well as its mournful ending, speaks to both the ability to connect with outsiders and also how that connection cannot eradicate the very real conditions in which some people live.

The film’s somber color palette and narrative simplicity lay bare the human crisis at the center of the story. The desolate, empty setting and gray skies produce a bleak milieu, whereas the trailer’s narrow, red interior, with its Christmas lights and taped-up windows, speaks to the owner’s substance level existence. On her refrigerator, there is a picture of a small baby next to a snapshot of Marilyn Monroe blowing out birthday cake candles. The red interior, the lights, and the photos are glimpses of desire, loss, and necessity.

Roxy’s melancholy complexity lies in its reveal of the pair’s true relationship. While usually such reveals succumb to schmaltziness or melodrama, here a short meeting ends the way it begins, with two people parting as strangers. There are real world problems that cannot be resolved through a short connection. However, the film points to those connections that link us. Refugees of war, or capitalism, or domestic violence, are all of our brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces. They are our family, if only we could see them intimately.