1:58
2014 · 11m · España
Directed by Rodrigo Cortés
A young woman drives alone at night along a secondary road with only her car radio for company, and the forest is the worst possible place to run out of petrol.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a premise that sounds like every other stranded-motorist nightmare, but Cortés refuses to let you off the hook with jump scares—the real horror is what the radio *doesn't* tell you, and that restraint is genuinely unsettling in a way most thrillers wouldn't dare.
Cortés demonstrates formal command of the confined-space thriller, using the car and darkness as both literal frame and psychological container; the radio as narrator positions this squarely in a lineage of unreliable-witness storytelling that rewards close attention to sound design and cutting.
What makes this work on a shoestring is the decision to weaponize the radio itself—every station change, every lost signal, every moment of dead air becomes the engine of dread rather than what's lurking outside, and that single formal choice transforms a low-budget night drive into something claustrophobic and genuinely resourceful.