Still Up There
2022 · 4m · Ireland
Directed by Joe Loftus
Genres: experimental, horror, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
An astronaut on the brink of death regains consciousness in the vast emptiness of space and is confronted by the sight of his own severed arm eerily floating past him - almost as if it is waving.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A severed arm waving at a dying astronaut should be absurd, maudlin, even ridiculous—and yet Loftus plays it completely straight, letting the surreal premise do the heavy lifting without irony or apology. It's the kind of high-concept weirdness that makes you lean forward instead of roll your eyes, which is exactly where the best subversive shorts live.
The film sits at an interesting juncture between body-horror tradition and minimalist sci-fi, though its formal restraint—the stillness, the negative space—occasionally feels like it's borrowing from the Kubrick playbook without fully earning its own visual argument.
The decision to make that severed arm almost gentle, almost companionable in its float, transforms what could have been gratuitous gore into something genuinely haunting; that tonal choice—treating horror as intimacy rather than spectacle—is what lifts a 4-minute premise into genuine emotional territory.
Reviews
Joe Loftus's 2022 short Still Up There will creep inside your senses and linger far longer than you desire. Combining cosmic horror with unnerving psychological tension, Still Up There serves up a haunting experience that will leave viewers unnerved.