A Sickness
2021 · 10m
Directed by Guy Soulsby
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
Stephen's life is governed by routine and order; he is a loner, and he has a dark secret.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise screams midstream thriller—loner, dark secret, routine unraveling—until it doesn't, and that's when Soulsby's actually doing something. But the film lives or dies on whether it commits to subverting the setup, and I'm not convinced it has the guts.
A disciplined exercise in psychological suspense that understands its debts to the Simenon tradition and contemporary Nordic noir; the question is whether Soulsby's formal choices—pacing, sound design, the architecture of revelation—earn the somber restraint.
What matters here is the single decision to let the camera linger on Stephen's face in routine moments before the rupture—that choice tells you whether this is just a dark-secret thriller or something that uses constraint to build genuine dread.
Reviews
Love how the tension builds to the end. Terrific sound work here.