Abracitos
2020 · 11m · Spain
Directed by Tony Morales
A terrible phone call in the middle of the night shakes Laura's world. Meanwhile, little Ainara plays in her room. The appearance of an unknown being will test the mental and emotional stability of the two sisters.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Horror-thriller about a midnight phone call and a mysterious presence sounds like boilerplate until you realize the film refuses to explain what the *being* actually is—and somehow that ambiguity makes the dread worse, not lazy.
Morales constructs tension through spatial editing and the formal distance between Laura's crisis and Ainara's innocent play, a compositional strategy that recalls the restraint of elevated horror, though the surreal turn asks whether this sits comfortably in that tradition.
The film's entire grip hinges on the sound design—that unknown being isn't shown clearly but *heard* in a way that makes your brain fill in the terror, a choice that does unsettling work on a micro-budget that a bigger film would waste on reveal shots.
Reviews
60-seconds into Tony Morales' 11-minute horror short and I'm already totally freaked out...Abracitos enters total nerve-shredding territory.