Tiny Thing
2023 · 16m · USA
Directed by Joshua Giuliano
Genres: dark comedy, horror
Tones: darkly comic, tender, tense
A couple's romantic waterfront getaway takes a dark turn when, after Lacy confesses her love and Brian fails to respond, a tiny fly becomes trapped in his ear—unleashing increasingly desperate and horrifying attempts to remove it as their evening spirals into chaos.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Fly in the ear as static-shot body horror about emotional avoidance — that's a clean premise and the rigid framing could really cook. Title and trailer suggest this might actually be good.
Giuliano's static-shot rigor with a Cronenbergian aural-canal conceit pitches itself with formal seriousness, though the YouTube placement only previews 30 seconds. The premise is sharp; I would want to verify the execution.
Composed entirely of deliberate static shots — using fixed camera as a body-horror discipline is exactly the right formal move, since the fly-in-the-ear escalates by performance and sound design rather than coverage. The metaphor for resistance to intimacy is also disgusting in the right way.
Reviews
The performances by both Jacob DeMonte-Finn and Britt Harris work to ground the film in reality, making its disturbing conclusion feel all the more believable.
The fly plot is so fresh and visceral and the underlying romance gives the film the necessary meat to sustain its 16-minute run-time.
Festivals
- Brooklyn Horror Film Festival 2023, Best Director
- Fantastic Fest 2023
- FrightFest 2023
- Fantasia International Film Festival 2023
- Beyond Fest 2023
- Montclair Film Festival 2023
- Calgary Underground Film Festival 2024