Can You Hop on a Quick Call?
2026 · 6m · USA
Directed by Erin Murray
Genres: dark comedy, horror, sci-fi
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
In 2028, office workers jack into a teleconferencing device via tube-like organs pulled from a living man's stomach, and one technophobic employee resists.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Finally, a premise that actually makes you sit up and say *what*—biotech horror crossed with office-culture satire, filtered through pure absurdist body horror. This is the kind of subversive left turn that makes every other sci-fi short feel like it's playing it safe.
Murray's commitment to the grotesque as formal language places this squarely in a lineage of body-horror surrealism; the restraint in not overselling the setup, letting the tube-organs speak for themselves, shows considerable craft maturity for a six-minute piece.
The decision to root this in one technophobe's resistance—making the emotional anchor a refusal rather than an embrace—transforms what could've been a gimmick into something genuinely unsettling, and that single point of view discipline is what sells the whole premise.
Reviews
Body horror meets teleconferencing in Erin Murray's new short film, 'Can You Hop On a Quick Call?' Neither the sardonic script nor the rest of the cast acknowledge the sheer horror of it all—instead, it's just one of those things to come back to after lunch.