The Super Recogniser
2017 · 11m · UK
Directed by Jennifer Sheridan
Genres: drama, sci-fi, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
Scott, a quiet young man with an exceptional gift for recognising faces, has been recruited into a secret government surveillance initiative — but as he stares at strangers all day, the boundaries of his work and his life start to bleed together in unsettling ways.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects sci-fi surveillance to be flashy and paranoid, so Sheridan just... makes it quiet and interior, turning a government program into a study of one man's face-blindness to his own unraveling—it's subversive because it refuses the genre's usual grandstanding.
The film sits knowingly in the lineage of speculative thriller-dramas that weaponize intimacy (Carpenter, De Palma), using the super-recogniser premise as both MacGuffin and metaphor, with the precision of someone who understands surveillance cinema's formal grammar.
The masterstroke is the editing decision to match Scott's fragmenting perception through his recognition work—by letting the montage of faces become rhythmically distorted as his mental state deteriorates, Sheridan does everything on a shoestring that others would need a budget to fake.
Reviews
Sheridan does an excellent job of building a feeling of unease here, dread creeping in as it slowly becomes apparent that Jacob's world isn't what it seems.
Outstanding performances from Game of Thrones star Jacob Anderson and Ritu Arya anchor a visually stunning, well-written sci-fi short.
Festivals
- Dublin Sci-Fi Film Festival, Best Sci-Fi Short Film
- FantaSci Short Film Festival, Best Thriller
- London City Film Awards, Best Sci-Fi
- Sci-Fi/Fantasy Feedback Festival, Best Performances