The Day After The Day After
2024 · 12m · USA
Directed by Sam Benenati
Genres: drama
Tones: melancholic
After watching the 1983 TV movie 'The Day After,' a man slips into an existential crisis and calls his first love whom he hasn't spoken to in years.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Man watches the 1983 nuclear-war TV movie and calls his ex. Tiny premise, tiny film, and the cultural-reference scaffolding is doing more work than the relationship — fine but slight.
Using the 1983 nuclear-war TV movie as a phone-call trigger for an ex-lover reconnection is a smart anchoring device — Benenati is working the Joachim Trier register of cultural-artifact-as-emotional-pretext. Twelve minutes feels right for a single phone call.
Using the actual 1983 nuclear-war TV movie as the trigger for an ex-call is a specific cultural-artifact hook that gives the present-day phone call its emotional architecture. 12 minutes, 22K views; whether the intertextual frame earns the intimacy is the question.
Reviews
It's not a flashy performance, but it is massively absorbing and, by the end of the film's 11 minutes, massively moving.
Benenati can consistently pen and film scripts that are monologues or two-handers yet leave viewers on the edge of their seats.