Light My Fire
2018 · 9m
Directed by Bobb Barito
On the Fourth of July, a father done watching his daughter get hurt confronts her abusive boyfriend, with fireworks about to go up.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The Fourth of July backdrop feels like it's reaching for symbolism the script doesn't earn—patriotic fireworks as emotional punctuation is exactly the kind of on-the-nose move most shorts hide behind, and this one doesn't subvert it hard enough to make it interesting.
A competent domestic thriller that understands the grammar of tension and restraint, though it works squarely within familiar lineage (kitchen-sink realism meets genre climax) without pushing the formal language in any direction that lingers.
The ticking clock of the fireworks is a smart structural choice, but what makes this work is the decision to keep the father's rage mostly *internal*—letting the actor's stillness carry the violence instead of releasing it, which transforms the whole dynamic from predictable confrontation into something genuinely unsettling.