 | This film was an official selection at the 6th annual International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival in Tempe in 2010. Here's an index to my reviews of 2010 films. |
We see a man, surrounded by darkness. Out of the black comes a bloody girl, perhaps a corpse. She screams at him. It's a memorable opening for a short film but it's all a dream. Westley Moore is in therapy and we can understand why given that we came in on his fourth run through that particular nightmare. He's a telemarketer, which means he deserves all the nightmares he gets, however bad he is at his job, but his psychiatrist suggests lucid dreaming as a potential solution and he goes for it. This short sprang from an acute interest director Christopher Price has in the subject and so we can sure that he's done his research. Westley writes down all his dreams as he wakes up. He reads random signs, counts fingers and looks at his reflection, all tricks to become lucid in his dreaming. And it works a treat. He successfully banishes the corpse girl and, as an added bonus, replaces her with the postgirl he lusts after at work.
Of course if it were that simple, this wouldn't be much of a short. Just as he gets the control back that he wanted all along, things start slipping again. After all, if you can manage to spend your sleeping hours taking down your despised boss with barbed wire baseball bats and making wild passionate love to Sarah the sexy postgirl, would you want to wake up? Well, Westley doesn't either, so his normal life takes even more of a hit as he spends his days waiting to go to sleep, even stooping to sleeping pills to get him there. No wonder his therapist is pissed, but then she presumably hasn't seen Brazil so doesn't realise how freaky happy endings can get. This is a fun little short, with Lanny Rethabar from Closets and Avé Maria in full on William Shatner mode as Westley's boss, along with a couple of other capable actors who I can't name because there are no details about this film anywhere, not even at IMDb. I'd like to see it again.
2 comments:
Hal why do you devote 10 paragraphs to reveiwing some films where-as others only get 2 paragraphs.
Mostly it depends on how much I want to say but there are other factors.
Shorts usually work out at two or three paragraphs. Some inspire so work out longer, some disappoint so end up shorter. Some are so short that saying anything about them at all becomes something of a spoiler.
Features usually average out between five and seven paragraphs, again with caveats.
Cinematic Heaven and Hell reviews are more like 2,500 words because they're aimed at being more substantial and will end up in book form.
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