Anesthesia
2025 · 13m · USA
Directed by Jeff Osborne
Genres: drama, sci-fi, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
A Manhattan business executive undergoing open-heart surgery uses a futuristic anesthesia app that conjures a vivid encounter with his childhood mother, but the dreamscape is breached by computer hackers seeking to exploit his unconscious mind.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Here's the move: take the most intimate, vulnerable moment in human experience—open-heart surgery, mother-loss, the dream logic of anesthesia—and *corrupt* it with hackers and cyberpunk corporate espionage. Most scouts would pick the trauma drama OR the sci-fi thriller and call it a day; Osborne's doing both simultaneously and refusing to let either one win, which is exactly the kind of premise that makes consensus critics uncomfortable.
The formal challenge here is architectural—how do you thread intimate psychological drama through a thriller scaffold without collapsing into either sentimentality or spectacle? The film's rigor will live in its editing choices, in how the dream-state boundaries dissolve under hacker intrusion, and whether it can locate itself in the lineage of body-horror sci-fi that takes its emotional core seriously.
The entire film hinges on a single decision: whether the anesthesia app's UI and dream-breach logic feel *real* enough to carry the weight of the mother encounter—if that technical choice lands, the intimacy becomes terrifying; if it doesn't, it's just a high-concept gimmick masking familiar grief.
Reviews
A high-concept psychological thriller that blurs the line between emotional trauma and psychological suspense, anchored by a powerhouse ensemble.
Festivals
- North Hollywood CineFest 2025
- San Jose International Short Film Festival 2025
- Film Fest LA 2025, Award Nomination