The Study
2022 · 9m
Directed by Will Bakke
Genres: horror, mystery, sci-fi
Tones: absurdist, surreal, tense
Six strangers volunteering for a paid medical study at a cabin discover a passageway that loops impossibly and a closet door opening onto an infinite abyss.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A medical study gone M.C. Escher—the setup is so aggressively normal it loops back into genius, and the abyss closet is the kind of "wait, WHAT?" escalation that makes everyone else nervous and me very happy. Bakke's betting you'll buy infinite dread in nine minutes, and he's right.
The premise gestures toward Twilight Zone machinery, but the film's real sophistication lies in its restraint with the uncanny—each architectural violation earns its screen time, and the editing respects the geometry of the reveal rather than overwhelming it with cuts. A cleanly executed descent into controlled strangeness.
The decision to keep the cabin's location and the volunteers' backstories deliberately empty is what sells the cosmic horror; Bakke understands that specificity about who they are would anchor us, and he refuses to let us anchor, which on a modest budget is the entire movie.