Stalled
2022 · 20m · USA
Directed by Matt Black
Genres: dark comedy, sci-fi, thriller
Tones: darkly comic, tense
Late for the most important meeting of his life, a toxic executive finds himself trapped in a time paradox inside a public restroom, looping through the same minute as he confronts increasingly bizarre versions of himself.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A time-loop thriller that ditches the usual sci-fi spectacle for a single bathroom stall — it's exactly the kind of constraint-as-premise move that makes people uncomfortable, and Black leans into the absurdity hard enough that it actually works. Most scouts would've passed; that's precisely why it's interesting.
The film understands its debt to Groundhog Day while deliberately inverting the form through spatial confinement and escalating paradox, showing real formal discipline in how each loop compounds rather than repeats. It's a structured argument about time-loop grammar made visible through editing and production design.
The decision to play almost everything in real-time, letting the mounting dread live in the actor's face and the sound design of the space rather than cutting away to expository relief, is what transforms a high-concept premise into something genuinely unsettling on a shoestring budget.
Reviews
This is a polished, slick production.
A sharp-witted time travel caper with an excellent script, a great performer, and a simple special effect.
Festivals
- Lone Star Film Festival 2022