EMOH
2024 · 8m · USA
Directed by Katy Joy
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
A lone space traveler named Eve and her A.I. assistant land on a planet nearly identical to Earth — but everything is mirrored, even rivers flow backward. When the A.I. malfunctions and reverts to an emotional-support mode, Eve must complete the mission alone.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The mirrored-world conceit feels like high-concept window dressing—rivers flow backward, sure, but the emotional core is stock sci-fi loneliness. Joy reaches for the subversive but lands in the expected.
A formally elegant chamber piece that understands the lineage of isolation narratives from 2001 onward; the backward-HOME title is clever but the film's restraint and visual symmetry place it squarely in a well-trodden tradition.
The decision to strip the A.I. of its assistive function and force Eve into silence is where this breathes—suddenly an 8-minute budget film becomes about the absence of a voice, and that one choice reframes everything around it.
Reviews
Stunning visuals and vivid colors... a new warning about the relationship between human beings and technology, in special AI.
The story is quite intriguing, and the ending was unexpected — although not entirely original.