Millie's Care Free Day
2023 · 9m · United States
Directed by Michael Licisyn
Genres: dark comedy, drama, fantasy
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, surreal
Under the regime of depression and insomnia, Millie sets out to experience one day differently — until she comes face to face with the dead best friend whose calls she keeps rejecting.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The dead best friend callback is a premise that should collapse into sentimentality, but Licisyn refuses to let it—the dark comedy holding steady against the pull toward uplift is genuinely subversive, though the execution doesn't quite earn its own irreverence.
A formally aware descent into surrealism that understands its lineage in magical-realist trauma cinema; the tonal shifts between melancholia and dark comedy are precisely calibrated, even if the film doesn't quite achieve the seamlessness of the traditions it's conversing with.
The decision to keep Millie rejecting the calls even as the friend materializes—refusing catharsis in favor of unflinching avoidance—is the hinge that makes a nine-minute budget feel like it contains something true and difficult that couldn't be bigger.
Reviews
Miller, traversing the length from apathy, hope, to anguish, is a compelling face and the only constant in the opening montage sequence. It leads to a scene that is equal parts unexpected and unsettling, not the least because Leah is wearing the same shirt as Millie.