The Taking
2020 · 13m · United States
Directed by Matt Eskandari
Genres: horror, mystery, thriller
Some old houses have secrets.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise is so thin it's translucent—'old house has secrets' is the most consensus horror setup alive—but the surreal tone suggests Eskandari might be doing something weirder than the logline lets on; I'd need to see it to know if he's actually subverting the genre or just tarting it up.
A 13-minute horror short navigating the tired 'haunted house' tradition requires either formal precision or a clear lineage argument; without knowing the execution, it's hard to assess whether this stakes its claim through craft rigor or simply inhabits a well-worn form.
Surreal horror at 13 minutes lives or dies on one choice—a sound design decision, a specific camera move, a performance beat that breaks the formula—and that's where Eskandari either earns the runtime or wastes it; the tension between tense and surreal could be that lift if he commits.