Setaceous
2017 · 11m · Australia
Directed by Tel Benjamin
Genres: horror, mystery, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
Awoken by an incessant car alarm, a small group of neighbours discover a mysterious, seemingly abandoned car in their suburban cul-de-sac — and slowly realise it may hold something far darker in store for them.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a suburban nightmare assembled from the most mundane possible trigger—a car alarm—which is either brilliantly perverse or just decent genre competence; the film doesn't quite commit hard enough to the absurdity to earn the contrarian crown.
Benjamin demonstrates formal control in the escalation from quotidian annoyance to dread, positioning the work within a lineage of domestic-space horror that recalls both Haneke's alienation and classic thriller grammar, though the execution remains somewhat restrained.
The real move here is how the sound design—that relentless, maddening alarm—does the heavy lifting of characterization and mood that a bigger budget would spread across dialogue and elaborate set pieces; it's a constraint that becomes the entire film's skeleton.