Stars: Jermain Byers and Clifton Gray
This film was a submission to one of the IFP Phoenix film challenges in 2013. Here's an index to my reviews of 2013 submissions. |
The story here happens in the month between the reading of a will and the allocation of assets; to fit in the required running time, we only follow one of the three surviving relatives of the deceased, Gertrude Elizabeth Merryweather. That's a shame, as I'd like to have seen the other two stories that are told only in hints. There are riders to the will; each of the three beneficiaries are given a suitably macabre task to fulfil. Roger must spend 30 days in a haunted house, Jessica must find Aunt Gert's killer and avenge her death, while Gary must safeguard a cursed object. It's a monkey, a child's toy, to which he's handcuffed for the entire thirty days, and his cursed misadventures comprise most of this short. It goes precisely as well as you might expect, but there's still time for substance. Jermain Byers shows some charm as Gary, but it's Clifton Gray who steals the show as the dry lawyer. Unfortunately he only gets to bookend the piece, but he does it well enough to haul us in and leave us wanting more.
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