Springs
15m · USA
Directed by Morgan Healani Mein
Brooklyn 20-somethings Margo and Dan's picturesque Hamptons vacation is interrupted by the arrival of a strange unexpected neighbor, The Clammer, forcing them to determine if he is a friend or foe.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A Hamptons vacation horror that refuses to pick a lane — it's queer melodrama AND body dread AND domestic thriller, all squirming together in 14 minutes like they're supposed to be there. Everyone else would've cleanly separated these genres; Mein lets them contaminate each other.
The formal restraint is surgical: Mein understands that the most unsettling horror emerges from the spaces between people in close quarters, positioning this within a lineage of slow-burn psychological cinema that trusts atmosphere over spectacle.
There's a single choice here — the decision to keep the camera intimate and still while everything emotional decomposes around it — that transforms what could've been precious indie angst into something genuinely destabilizing.