All Shook Up
2018 · 5m · Canada
Directed by Eva Michon
Genres: dark comedy, thriller
Tones: absurdist, dark, surreal
After being mugged on Halloween night, Dave retreats to his hotel room to report the incident to his credit card company, and the customer service call spirals into something disturbing and surreal. A nihilist tone piece starring Maxwell McCabe-Lokos.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Gets mugged on Halloween, calls credit card company, everything goes wrong in entirely unexpected ways. The mundane bureaucratic horror genre has arrived and it's five minutes long.
Kafka-in-a-Holiday-Inn during a hold-music call — Eva Michon weaponizing customer service automation as cosmic horror is the kind of mundane-uncanny gesture I trust at five minutes, and Maxwell McCabe-Lokos can sell it.
Five minutes of Maxwell McCabe-Lokos dissociating on a bank hold call while friends in Halloween costumes hover — Eva Michon turning bureaucratic horror into a tight pitch-black miniature is exactly the runtime this idea needs.