Snapdragons
2016 · 9m
Directed by Sean U'Ren
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
A lonely scientist tries to use her own technology to engineer the companionship she cannot find, and the experiment takes on a life of its own.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a competent sci-fi parable about loneliness—the kind of premise that sounds like it's been workshopped to death in MFA programs. U'Ren doesn't subvert the inevitable tragedy, he just executes it, which is fine, but fine is the enemy of what I'm actually looking for.
A formally precise meditation on creation and abandonment that sits comfortably in the lineage of body-horror sci-fi and the Frankenstein tradition; the control of tone and pacing demonstrates real command of how mood and image work in concert.
The singular choice here is the decision to keep the creation itself ambiguous—neither fully monstrous nor fully sympathetic—which forces the entire emotional weight onto the scientist's face and the quality of light in those final moments; that restraint is what transforms a familiar premise into something genuinely haunting.