La migala
2011 · 15m · España
Directed by Jaime Dezcallar
Genres: dark comedy, drama, horror
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
A man with arachnophobia buys a venomous tarantula to release it loose in his apartment, hoping to install his own personal hell to destroy the other one inside him.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A man weaponizes his own phobia as therapy—buying the thing he fears most to exorcise an internal demon. It's perverse, absurdist, and structurally inverted in exactly the way most shorts are too timid to attempt; the premise doesn't resolve into neat metaphor, it *becomes* the problem.
Dezcallar works in the surrealist lineage of body horror and psychological portraiture, using the tarantula as both literal object and Buñuelian symbol; the film's formal restraint in staging this baroque premise demonstrates considerable sophistication in restraint.
The entire film pivots on the decision to keep the tarantula's presence mostly off-screen—what you *don't* see in the apartment becomes more unsettling than any practical effect could, and it's that singular choice of negative space that transforms a high-concept gimmick into something genuinely haunting.