Caller Number Nine!
2024 · 8m
Directed by Sandy Honig
Genres: comedy, dark comedy, thriller
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, tense
A telemarketer with a severe anger problem accidentally calls into a radio show. He wins a radio contest and enters a standoff with the unhinged host.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Two unhinged characters locked in a real-time verbal cage match—one doesn't even know he's in the ring—is exactly the kind of premise that sounds like a one-joke disaster until it isn't. Honig threads a needle between absurdist comedy and genuine tension that most shorts are too polite to even attempt.
The radio-show-as-formal-constraint is smartly deployed; Honig respects the spatial and temporal limitations of the medium itself, creating a structure that feels both playful and disciplined—reminiscent of the formalist sound comedy tradition without ever genuflecting to it.
The decision to keep the telemarketer's rage *genuine* rather than cartoonish—letting his actual fury collide with the host's theatrical unraveling—is what transforms an elevator-pitch concept into something that actually lands with weight in eight minutes.
Reviews
Sandy Honig zeigt uns im Kurzfilm „Caller Number Nine!“ einen ganz besonderen Fall, in dem zwei Quasselstrippen aufeinandertreffen. Und dann wird alles… sehr seltsam.