Galapagos
2022 · 12m · United States
Directed by Kyle Sims
Genres: drama, mystery, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
A dialogue-free psychological thriller about a lonely schoolteacher whose classroom rabbit suddenly disappears, and the increasingly unsettling encounter with one of her students that follows.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the rabbit to be a metaphor, the student to be a ghost, the whole thing to collapse into Shyamalan theatrics — and Sims just refuses, holding you in genuine ambiguity until you're convinced the real horror is not knowing what you're watching.
A disciplined exercise in negative space and implication, where the absence of dialogue forces the grammar of editing and framing to carry psychological weight; sitcom the lineage of Polanski-adjacent unease through purely formal means.
The decision to keep the camera locked on the teacher's face for the entire encounter — never cutting to the student's reactions, never giving us the satisfaction of seeing what she sees — is the film, and it's heartbreaking.
Festivals
- Aspen Shortsfest (World Premiere) 2023, Special Mention