Buyer's Remorse
2019 · 17m · Australia
Directed by Lachlan Smith
A young couple suspects their downstairs landlords are harboring something dark.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Sinister landlords downstairs is a perfectly fine genre premise and the credit list says someone cared about the craft, but Rosemary's Baby comparison oversells. Worth a Saturday night, not a thesis.
The Rosemary's Baby template applied to rental anxiety is shrewd thematic positioning, and a sixteen-minute Australian short with full crew credits suggests real production discipline. Genre is well-served by specificity.
16:46 with a full credited crew (DoP Daniel Webster, sound designer Lochlin Collier, digital asset artist Kieran Slate) — that 'digital asset artist' line is the tell that this 2019 landlord-horror short is doing some VFX work to sell its sinister secret. Suburban-rental anxiety is fertile ground; production scale suggests a serious go at it.