The Bottom
2024 · 8m
Directed by Morgan Ruaidhrí O'Sullivan, James Kautz
Genres: drama, horror, thriller
At the edge of a mysterious lake, a reckoning between friends becomes a fight for life as one man's mind games threaten the other's grip on reality.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A psychological horror that inverts the survival-thriller playbook—the real monster isn't the lake, it's the slow dissolution of one man's sanity through another's cruelty, which is the kind of premise that makes you uncomfortable precisely because it strips away the comforting rules of the genre.
The film positions itself cleverly within the tradition of psychological horror and Beckettian drama, where two figures and an elemental setting become a pressure cooker for examining power and gaslighting with formal precision.
What makes this work is the decision to keep the camera fixed on the men's faces and bodies rather than the lake itself—every moment of doubt, every flinch becomes the actual landscape, and that restraint transforms a minimal setup into something claustrophobic and devastating.
Festivals
- Spooktacular Film Fest for Horror & Sci-Fi, Official Selection