Back in 5 minutes
2018 · 2m · Reino Unido
Directed by Noah Archer, Raffaele Imbò
Genres: dark comedy, thriller
Tones: darkly comic, tense
A customer, angered by the 'Back in 5 minutes' sign left on a shop's front door by its owner, decides to go in anyway — until something stops him.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A two-minute film that takes the most mundane social contract—a 'Back in 5 minutes' sign—and weaponizes it into something genuinely unsettling; most people wouldn't even see the premise as a threat, which is exactly why this works.
The economy of form here is admirable—two minutes to establish tension, social expectation, and then subvert it—though the film's darkness feels more tonal flourish than thematic argument, leaning on surprise rather than interrogating the anxieties it briefly touches.
The decision to keep us outside the shop, watching the customer's face as his irritation calcifies into something else, is what makes this tick; that framing choice—restraint as suspense—does all the heavy lifting on a nothing budget.