Candlelight is at the tip of the faucet for the grand beginning to director, writer, and editor Mike Barkhoff's second life of his career. Prior to this, he invested his time in sole short films - at times spanning upwards of thirty or so minutes - and a few web series. Ones that, for someone his age, were undoubtedly impressive, but ultimately, nowhere near the brilliance of this.
In what I would declare Barkhoff's most memorable release (so far), Barkhoff bends every expectation the audience had for his return from a fairly lengthy standstill of a hiatus. His last releases, installments in Bond P Batman and a Porking Badger short film, both fell into his wholesome lineup a mere month apart, but over a year to the release of this film. And his official return, which featured in The Moderate Gatsby and an Into The Wild trailer, was superficial for him at that point and highly gravitating in comparison to how he left us to deduct his total skillset, but Candlelight is yards away from both of the aforementioned named attempts.
For starters, Candlelight's run time is just over three minutes, but is named by many - almost all - of Barkhoff's audience as being his magnum opus. It was written under an hour, filmed under six, and, the most impressive feat, had major swift changes during production due to planning falling apart. All of those combined make the turnout of Candlelight, again, not only impressive, but also entirely noteworthy.