El juego de la tiza
2022 · 10m · España
Directed by Ian Loren
Genres: dark comedy, drama
Tones: darkly comic, tense
Two friends rest from the costume party one of them has thrown at his house, until boredom leads them to play a game that will change their relationship forever.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise reads like a cautionary tale someone's grandmother would tell, but Loren commits to the bit with enough tonal whiplash—bouncing between party aftermath mundanity and genuine dread—that it actually earns its darkness instead of just performing it.
A precise orchestration of dramatic irony: the film understands exactly how much rope to give the audience before the pivot lands, situating itself in a lineage of short drama that treats boredom as genuine philosophical territory.
The decision to keep the chalk game itself off-screen while letting the actors' faces do the descent is what transforms this from premise-driven gimmick into something that actually *lands*—ten minutes of escalating unease built entirely on performance economy and a sound designer who knows when to go quiet.