In Your Area
2019 · 10m · United States
Directed by Daniel Slottje
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
Sophie Pongrace 'swipes-right' looking for a real connection but encounters something else entirely.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The dating app premise is table stakes—what saves it is the film's refusal to telegraph what 'something else entirely' means, letting the dread build without winking at the audience or settling for easy commentary on parasocial connection.
A formally composed meditation on desire and predation that owes debts to both the psychological thriller lineage and contemporary digital-age cinema, with editing that respects the slow accumulation of unease over cheap shock.
The masterstroke is the restrained use of the app interface itself—rather than leaning on aesthetic gimmickry, Slottje lets the mundane UI become genuinely menacing through sound design and framing choices that transform a familiar scroll into something that feels tracked.