Kickstart My Heart

Buffy-adjacent action-horror is exactly the kind of consensus move I'd normally skip, but there's something genuinely unhinged about a short that commits this hard to theatrical monster brawls without winking at itself—it almost becomes subversive through sheer sincerity.

The film understands its debt to late-90s genre television and executes within that lineage with formal discipline, though the question remains whether Boll is deepening that tradition or simply inhabiting it competently.

What matters here is the decision to shoot practical combat choreography at this scale and pace—Boll's betting everything on kinetic momentum and practical effects work to carry a 14-minute narrative, and that commitment to doing it the harder way is what makes the whole thing sing.

Kickstart My Heart finds a successful balance between kick-ass action, blended with horror elements, and the necessary emotional weight to keep the story moving forward. The camera work and quick cuts inject the necessary rhythm and intensity to put us right there, with Lilly, during the fight scenes.

There are various elements in Kickstart My Heart that reminded me of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is a high compliment in my book. It's an almost surreal feeling that a film can be this touching, during a scene in which the main actress' face is covered in ghoulish blood.

Bollig's real life story, and her short, are life-affirming testaments to the power of defiance in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversity. In the process of sharing the film with audiences, Bollig has found connection with viewers who approached her to share their own "stories about physical trauma, heartbreak, loss, and all the things we all eventually encounter."