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2018 · 8m · United States
Directed by Ben Larned
Genres: drama, fantasy, romance
Tones: melancholic, mythic, tender
In a remote motel room, a man who sold his soul is visited by the demon Salesman come to collect — but the demon's unnatural feelings for him stay his hand.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the demon to be the monster here, so of course Larned flips it—but the real subversion isn't the premise, it's that he commits so completely to the mythic tenderness that it actually lands instead of winking at us.
A film aware of its debts to Faustian tragedy and queer desire literature, executed with the formal restraint and compositional control that transforms eight minutes into something that feels inevitable—the kind of work that clarifies what the tradition was always capable of.
The entire film lives in the space between the Salesman's inhuman face and one genuine moment of hesitation; everything else serves that single choice, and it's enough to rewrite what we thought we were watching.