The Unknown Side
2015 · 6m · España
Directed by Mani Guerrero
Julia is home alone getting ready for bed when she receives a message from a stranger; letting curiosity win brings something or someone into her house — and her phone.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise feels like a dozen other 'phone as portal' thrillers that everyone's already seen—which is exactly why Guerrero's restraint here is boring me. A stranger texts, curiosity wins, something bad happens; where's the subversion?
Guerrero demonstrates real compositional control in a 6-minute space, and the tension between domestic intimacy and digital intrusion sits in a lineage worth tracing—though the execution lands closer to competent exercise than the sustained formal argument that would make this linger.
The decision to keep the threat almost entirely off-screen and let the phone's glow do the psychological work—never cutting to the stranger, trusting the actress's face and the device's cold light to carry the dread—is the singular choice that makes this small piece feel genuinely unsettling.