Another week and another short horror film from Andrew J.D Robinson (Placebo, A Walk Home Alone, Something Scary), this time it is Sightings that clocks in at just two minutes long. I would say in terms of effectiveness as a horror this was the best one of Robinson's I have seen yet, it gave me genuine chills.
Two sisters are consoling themselves about their other sister who has gone missing, however due to inserts of a corpse it seems the viewer knows more than they do...then they get a fateful phone call. At 120 seconds that is a nice little story, I confess I got so caught up in this that I totally forgot this was so short and so the ending took me by surprise. Sightings is made in a clever way, giving the viewer more information than the characters on screen (though could possibly be aspects of a dream one the two had). Throughout we get inserts of both a girl walking down a lonely path, and of a corpse (that has wonderful make-up effects on it). I was impressed with the quality of this and how relevant each shot was to the overall message.
The ending is very effective, it gave me proper goose bumps due to the simple repetition of a key dialogue line coupled with the music stabbing ominously. For me it was this ending, and the inserts that made Sightings work so well. There is very little dialogue here, what there is is all relevant and important (plus hints at a supernatural possibility).
It takes skill to be able to tell a story in such a short span of time, this was an effective little horror that worked without the need for lazy jump scares, or unoriginal topics. It's freely available to watch on YouTube so check it out below and see what you think.
SCORE:
No comments:
Post a Comment