Red Balloon
2010 · 13m · UK
Directed by Alexis Wajsbrot
A babysitter named Julie watches over a young girl named Dorothy who screams repeatedly from her bedroom throughout the night; each time Julie reassures her it was only a nightmare, though the film casts progressive doubt on that reassurance.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Wajsbrot's formal decision to repeat and modulate the same scene — the child's screaming, the reassurance — is structurally rigorous; it turns repetition into dread accumulation and demonstrates a sense of horror grammar that went on to inform his feature work.
Babysitter horror with repetition as formal device — and the director went on to co-direct Consecration, which is the most damning vote of confidence I can imagine. Twelve minutes, RED 4K, Danny Boyle's colorist. Slick. Slick is not scary.
Alexis Wajsbrot (later co-director of Consecration) using repetitive structure — the same nocturnal babysitter scene with accumulating dread — as a slow-horror precision instrument. Shot on RED 4K with Danny Boyle's colorist on grade.