The Disappearance of Willie Bingham
2015 · 13m
Directed by Matt Richards
Tones: dark, provocative, tense
Inmate Willie Bingham is the first man selected to undergo a gruesome new punishment introduced under the state's revised stance on capital crime.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A short that actually commits to its sick premise instead of winking at the camera—the state punishment conceit is so genuinely fucked up that it makes most 'transgressive' cinema look like Hallmark cards, and Richards doesn't flinch or apologize for it.
The formal restraint here is admirable; the film trusts its procedural framing to do the moral work, situating itself in a lineage of carceral horror that extends from Kafka through contemporary prison cinema, all without resorting to exploitation.
The sound design in the punishment sequence is what makes this land—that choice to keep everything nearly silent except for the ambient institutional hum transforms what could've been gratuitous into something genuinely unbearable, and that's the whole film right there.