Pentatarmex Rabitular
2024 · 13m · USA
Directed by Casey Friedman
Tones: contemplative, dark
A young woman mourning her grandmother takes a peculiar job that requires her to lure a mysterious unseen entity from a hole in her backyard.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Friedman works rigorously in the tradition of slow-build genre filmmaking — beautiful images, meticulously calibrated unease — making something genuinely singular out of the most deliberately oblique of premises.
Unnamed entity lured from a backyard hole as grief metaphor — the unknowability is the point, but 1,539 views and a Short of the Week badge isn't enough signal for me on something this conceptual. Cautious.
Short Of The Week 2024 plus Montclair Film Fest — Casey Friedman keeps the menace unnamed and unshown, betting everything on atmosphere. Thirteen minutes; the Picnic at Hanging Rock comparison is doing real work here.