DEN (The Mare)
2018 · 19m · Denmark
Directed by Casper Rudolf Emil Kjeldsen
Genres: drama, horror, thriller
Tones: dark, melancholic, mythic
In the bleak Danish winter, two social workers take in a mute young woman found alone in the woods, whose unsettling presence fills everyone around her with dread.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone's going to read this as a haunted-girl-in-the-house bore, but Kjeldsen is actually doing something weirder—he's made a film about social workers that refuses to let them be the rational anchor, which is deliciously uncomfortable and almost no one will notice.
The film sits deliberately in the lineage of Northern European art horror (Valeska Grisbach, Ari Aster's minimalism) while executing a formally precise study of dread through negative space and restraint—the unsettling presence is rendered almost entirely through what the frame *doesn't* show us.
There's a specific choice here where the muteness becomes active rather than passive—the sound design treats her silence as an acoustic presence, a weight in the room that does more work than any dialogue could, and that one decision makes the whole film breathe differently.
Reviews
The Mare is one of the most technically well-crafted suspense horror shorts I've watched in recent memory. Purely in terms of camera craft, this is next-level: amazing locations, shot compositions, and stunning lighting.
Festivals
- Reykjavik Film Festival 2018
- Nightmares Film Festival 2018, Nominated for Best Overall Short & Midnight Short
- Morbido Film Fest 2018
- Vienna Short Film Festival 2019