Be Uncertain
2018 · 15m · UK
Directed by Jack Carrivick
Genres: dark comedy, horror, thriller
Trapped in a stagnant routine with an unresponsive girlfriend, JD is confronted by a masked, knife-wielding intruder and kills him in self-defense — after which his reality begins to fracture into stranger and stranger fragments.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Carrivick refuses to solve his own puzzle, which is exactly the move; most filmmakers would've panic-explained the fracture by minute 10, but instead he holds firm in the surreal and lets the viewer sit in genuine uncertainty. That takes more guts than a twist ending.
The formal restraint here is disciplined—naturalistic blocking and sound design in the first half lend credibility to the rupture that follows, creating a tonal architecture that recalls both Polanski's claustrophobia and the epistemological games of contemporary arthouse horror.
The kill moment itself is where the whole thing pivots: that single decision to make it ambiguous—self-defense or something else?—fractures everything that follows, and Carrivick builds the entire cascading nightmare out of that one refusal to clarify.
Reviews
A smart soundtrack allied to effective night time shooting create an atmosphere crackling with tension.
A solidly produced piece but don't expect it to make sense.
Festivals
- Horror-On-Sea Film Festival 2019