The Move
2024 · 9m · USA
Directed by Eric Kissack
Tones: absurdist, humorous, melancholic
A couple moving into a new apartment discovers a mysterious portal that teleports objects five feet away; their wildly different reactions to the anomaly expose deep fault lines in their relationship.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Five-foot teleportation portal as relationship metaphor is actually a clever constraint — small enough to stay funny, weird enough to mean something. Kissack knows what he's doing; this is the rare 'couple discovers something weird' short that earns its premise.
Kissack mines a Charlie Kaufman-adjacent register, where a finite metaphysical aperture stands in for the conjugal abyss. Casting Amanda Crew and Dustin Milligan suggests a polished, comedic intelligence rather than a Cronenbergian one.
Kissack writes/directs/edits his own 9:05 sci-fi premise with Amanda Crew and Dustin Milligan, and the VFX-by-Niednagel credit suggests the five-foot portal is treated as an actual practical-looking gag rather than a CG distraction. The single-conceit short usually wins on edit timing, and Kissack cutting himself is a good sign.
Reviews
The jokes are not only excellent and well-paced, but also symptomatic of something deeper.
Todd's and Kate's reactions to the weirdness brings their differences to the surface, and we eventually get to the crux of the matter.
Festivals
- Florida Film Festival 2024
- Cleveland International Film Festival 2024
- Fantasia International Film Festival 2024
- LA Shorts International Film Festival 2024