Written and directed by Russell Goldman (additional crew on Halloween and Halloween Kills) and produced by Jamie Lee Curtis and Film Independent, Burn Out is a short nearly thirteen minute comedic horror about the dangers of overexerting yourself for your work, in this case both literally and figuratively.
Virgil (Everett Osborne - Sweetwater) is a former American Football star who was forced into retirement after an injury. Now he has hopes of being a successful member of a sports management company, run by the very confident Gower (Tommie Earl Jenkins - Wednesday TV show, Death Stranding video game voicework). Virgil is working on a proposal that he really hopes will impress Gower, but the pressure of his new role has led to him becoming increasingly stressed and under a lot of pressure, that just might lead to breaking point.
Burn Out was a hard one to explain, throughout there are voice overs and promotional videos from the mesmerising Gower interspersed with Virgil hard at work on his office laptop. There were arthouse style moments to this, again, especially with Gower who keeps appearing either talking or looking at the camera, or dancing alone against a black background. Events move forward in a direction that was not expected, with it becoming increasingly surreal all the way to the end. I liked the moments where Virgil's sportsman past and his actions in the present are edited together, and the format and pacing as a whole had a unique feel to it. Special mention also goes to the silent background office workers, their expressions and actions throughout lent a lot of humour to Virgil's stressful day, as well as suggesting implications for what was really going on.
Goldman states the story was inspired by his own experiences of post-concussive syndrome and stressful work environments, and this is translated well into the short film, with Goldman saying "Nothing is scarier (or more absurd) than what we can do to ourselves." A unique and fun short film with some good special effects, Burn Out had its world premiere at the 2024 Dances With Films at Los Angeles.
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