PONYTAILHEAD
2025 · 10m · USA
Directed by Brent Michal
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, tender
A tipsy woman calls her ex over to kill a bug, and the favor mutates into an unfiltered late-night reckoning between two people who can't quite stay broken up.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
The 'we should talk' breakup short is a tired genre. This one weaponizes a bug and lets two people loathe each other into honesty, which is a much better trick.
Litigating an entire ex-relationship under the pretext of pest control — a Marriage-Story-in-one-apartment-with-a-cockroach setup that lives or dies on the performances, but the premise has real compression.
An entire ex-relationship litigated under the pretext of pest control — that single-conceit pressure is the whole point. Two-hander apartment drama lives on chemistry, but the rose-and-list-of-faults detail is sharp.
Reviews
Filled with subtext and acerbic bickering, the film is carried by its convincing performances and intimate chemistry.