SHELLSHOCK
2026 · 2m
Directed by Tom Phillips
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
In the middle of a modern war, a terrified young soldier clings to a comforting hallucination to endure what surrounds him.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
War hallucination drama—sounds like every other soldier's-psyche breakdown, except Phillips seems genuinely uninterested in the breakdown part; the real subversion is that he lets the surreal comfort actually *work* without irony or moral handwringing, which most filmmakers are too cowardly to attempt.
A formally assured meditation on trauma and dissociation that owes clear debts to both the experimental war cinema lineage and the contemporary art film tradition; the melancholic restraint suggests a director who understands how much power lives in what remains unseen.
Two minutes on what's clearly a modest budget, but the decision to anchor the entire emotional weight on the texture of the hallucination itself—its tactile specificity rather than its narrative explanation—is what transforms a familiar premise into something that actually lands in your chest.