Boris in the Forest
2020 · 12m
Directed by Robert Hackett
A geeky American travels to London to find the birthplace of his horror hero Boris Karloff, but the run-down kebab shop now occupying the address holds a surprise.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A geek pilgrimage comedy that could've been standard tourist-worship fare, but the kebab shop twist—that the real discovery isn't the shrine but the living, mundane present—subverts the entire nostalgia economy these films usually genuflect to.
Hackett trades in a familiar British comedy-of-manners tradition (the disappointed American abroad, the deflated quest), but the tonal restraint and the willingness to let anticlimactic reality breathe suggests a sophistication about genre that most 12-minute comedies never reach.
The entire film hinges on how Hackett plays the moment of collision between fandom's constructed mythology and a tired shopkeeper's actual life—and the casting/performance choice to treat that collision with genuine empathy rather than mockery is what elevates this from premise into something real.