Ari
2023 · 22m · Chile
Directed by Joseph Acuña
Genres: dark comedy, fantasy, horror
Tones: dark, surreal, theatrical
Ari Harrison, a very well-educated girl, awakens the hatred and envy of Mariana, her classmate. Mariana casts a curse on her, leaving Ari trapped inside her favourite doll in a dimension much like hell, from which she must escape the demon boss who wants her soul.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A curse-trapped-in-a-doll descent into a hellscape dimension should be unbearable genre wallpaper, but Acuña treats the premise with enough theatrical weirdness and dark comedic teeth that it actually resists the obvious—this is the kind of "wait, they're playing it *that* way?" gamble that most scouts would skip and I'd greenlight immediately.
Acuña's command of tonal register—balancing horror, surrealism, and dark comedy across a contained supernatural narrative—shows formal sophistication and a clear awareness of how genre tropes can be refined rather than merely deployed; it's the kind of short that justifies itself through precision of execution rather than novelty of concept.
The decision to play Ari's entrapment in a doll with theatrical artifice instead of claustrophobic realism is what makes this work—that tonal commitment transforms what could be a budget constraint into the film's most distinctive visual and narrative choice, and Acuña holds it throughout.