The Forfeit
2022 · 14m · UK
Directed by Josie Charles, Phoebe Brooks
Genres: dark comedy, mystery, thriller
Tones: dark, darkly comic, tense
A working-class Welsh woman meets her wealthy English boyfriend's eccentric family for the first time on Christmas Eve, and as she's pulled into their traditional parlour game she begins to uncover a terrible secret.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects a cozy Christmas movie, and instead you get a parlour game that becomes a trap — it's the kind of premise that makes you squirm because the setup is so deceptively familiar that the dark turn actually lands.
The precision here is remarkable: two directors orchestrating tone like a locked-room mystery, using the formal grammar of the parlour game itself as both structure and weapon, the editing breathing with the restraint of someone who knows Agatha Christie's playbook intimately.
The magic lives in that single decision to let the game's rules become the film's rules — every reveal timed to the rhythm of play rather than exposition — and it's a choice that transforms what could've been a sketch into something genuinely unsettling on a shoestring.
Reviews
Two virtues define this short mystery film — the beautiful performance of Kate Morgan-Jones and the touch of Agatha Christie.
Festivals
- British Short Film Awards 2022, Best Director / Best Production Design / Best Sound Design (finalist)
- Kino London Short Film Festival 2023, Best Screenplay, Best Score
- London Director Awards 2023, Best Director - Thriller
- The Gogs International Short Film Festival 2022, Best UK-Made Short
- Final Girls Berlin Film Festival 2023
- British Shorts Berlin 2023