Trespass
2016 · 12m · Australia
Directed by Mirrah Foulkes
Genres: drama, mystery, thriller
Tones: contemplative, dark, tense
A woman walking her dog alone in the bush encounters a distressed young girl, then finds the girl's shoe in her dog's mouth. Unable to shake the encounter, she follows the girl to a nearby house, where an awkward, ambiguous, and increasingly unsettling confrontation unfolds.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Foulkes refuses to let you know what's actually happening, which should be infuriating but instead becomes the whole point—dread without explanation is a genuinely unsettling choice that most filmmakers are too eager to undercut.
This sits in a lineage of deliberately withholding psychological thrillers—think Haneke's restraint—where formal silence and the refusal of exposition become the film's primary formal statement.
That shoe in the dog's mouth is the entire film: one image that pivots the encounter from mundane to impossible, and Foulkes trusts that single detail enough to build eleven minutes of mounting wrongness around it without ever explaining it away.
Reviews
A visceral, unforgettable watch.
The film's ambiguous direction makes it much more unsettling than it would have been if it headed down the more expected route.
Festivals
- Toronto International Film Festival 2016
- Melbourne International Film Festival 2016, Best Australian Short Film