Blackwood
2018 · 11m · Australia
Directed by Andrew Montague
Genres: horror, mystery, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
A sound recordist who picked up a strange noise while filming on location in a forest wakes alone, confused and filthy in her own home, with the answer to what happened hidden on her sound recorder.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a solid possession-mystery setup, sure, but the premise plays it straight—trapped-recorder-holds-the-truth is exactly what you'd expect from a forest-horror short, and Montague doesn't seem interested in breaking that contract or making us uncomfortable in unexpected ways.
A formally competent exercise in dread that understands sound design as narrative architecture; the deliberate pacing and restraint show awareness of the genre's lineage, though it settles into familiar grooves rather than interrogating them.
The entire film hinges on the decision to make the sound recorder itself the unreliable narrator—keeping us locked in the protagonist's confusion rather than offering external clarity—and that structural choice transforms a generic premise into something that actually earns its runtime and ambiguity.