Attack of the Coat

The scouts

A possessed coat as protagonist—genuinely absurd enough to work, and Maxwell seems to understand that the weirdness IS the point, not a gimmick bolted onto something else. This is the kind of premise that makes other scouts nervous, which is exactly why it lands.

The film sits in an interesting lineage between body horror and domestic surrealism, though it risks collapsing under its own tonal ambitions; the dark comedy and genuine dread don't quite reconcile into the unified formal statement that would elevate it beyond a clever concept.

Maxwell's decision to make the coat itself the antagonist rather than a supernatural MacGuffin forces every scene to justify itself through specific performance choices—watching the actor negotiate intimacy with an inanimate object is where the real craft lives, and it's genuinely unsettling in ways the premise alone never could be.

Reviews

Attack of the Coat is a perfect example of how to balance two genres that naturally seem antithetical, holding its comedy and its horror in genuine tension, never letting either undercut the other. The result is a short with a thoroughly malevolent sense of humour, anchored around a fabulous performance from comedian Amy Gledhill.