Unfinished Business
7m · USA
Directed by Mary Dauterman
Genres: dark comedy, experimental, horror
Tones: dark, darkly comic, surreal
A male stripper turns up at a motel to perform for a room of blank-faced women in old-fashioned business attire. As he works the routine, the room itself starts to feel wrong.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Seven minutes, one stripper, a roomful of women dressed like 1950s middle management. The math on this is incredible — and Dauterman gets out before the joke wears.
Male strip routine staged as slow-creep horror tableau is a structurally daring inversion — comedy and dread sharing a motel room in seven minutes is exactly the kind of compression I respect. Strong yes.
A male strip routine staged as a slow-creep horror tableau in a motel of blank-faced women in 1980s business attire is exactly the kind of tonal stunt I want shorts to take. Seven minutes is the right size for the dread to do its work.
Reviews
Keeps it snappy and light, specializing in short & sweet comedies often with an unsettling bent.