DailyView: Day 309, Movie 437

Since I am heading off to The Batman tonight, I decided to do a short this early morning for the DailyView, but I went in a different direction. Instead of heading back into the 1920s or 1930s for Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy or Buster Keaton, I scoured YouTube for more recent shorts that would fill the same section. I found a list of good possibilities and today, I am watching a horror short called Other Side of the Box.

It is a scant 15 minutes, but Other Side of the Box manages to be very unnerving and intense in the short time frame. A couple is at home preparing dinner when an old friend, and possibly an old flame for the woman, arrives with a Christmas present. The present was a strange box that seemingly had no bottom. Then, someone is suddenly peaking out of the box.

The box is obviously cursed and leads to some scary moments in the short.

It does not give us much along the lines of resolution to the set up provided in the story. This short feels like one that could easily be expanded into a longer film, much like Lights Out or The Babadook. In fact, there feels like there is a rich backstory, not only of the box, but of the couple and their friend that could be mined to easily reach feature length.

The film starred Nick Tag and Teagan Rose as the couple and Josh Schell as the friend.

This was a winner at the SXSW Film Festival for the Grand Jury Award.

There was a lot of tension built and some powerful scenes without any gore or violence shown. It is an eerie and disturbing short that I hope finds its way into explaining the set up more.