A woman seeking a friend who vanished while investigating a cult follows up a lead in a man who spokes of dreams of something in the woods. She meets with him to discuss more, although will she regret what she could be uncovering?
There is a very nice atmosphere/feel to this short film, one of creeping dread even though it isn't totally clear why the viewer should feel that way. It builds well from a dialogue scene into some scenes in the woods of the title and once thee it adds to the sense of creepiness with some nicely unsettling moments. As a short film it leaves a lot more open than it answers but it is the journey rather than the destination here. The film looks and sounds good in both internal and external shots, which I liked and the use of soundtrack was good to create a bed of tension. The two cast members worked well; Orsini was maybe a bit heavy on the oddity in his dialogue scene but as a figure in the woods he was well used. I last saw Lucienne playing several characters in the film About Claire and in this film she used the changeable character thing again very well.
The final shots of the film are well done and her smiling face is genuinely unsettling. I don't think the sound on Ben's breathing was well balanced and his POV as the final shot didn't look as good as the rest of the film, but otherwise everything worked very well. Loved the red boldness of the end credits, although I don't think the music worked. Although the detail of the narrative forward and backward is light, the film works because it gets the tone right and feels unsettling and uneasy on its way to a nicely effective conclusion. It has its limits but it works within them well and hits the marks it was looking for pretty well.
There is a very nice atmosphere/feel to this short film, one of creeping dread even though it isn't totally clear why the viewer should feel that way. It builds well from a dialogue scene into some scenes in the woods of the title and once thee it adds to the sense of creepiness with some nicely unsettling moments. As a short film it leaves a lot more open than it answers but it is the journey rather than the destination here. The film looks and sounds good in both internal and external shots, which I liked and the use of soundtrack was good to create a bed of tension. The two cast members worked well; Orsini was maybe a bit heavy on the oddity in his dialogue scene but as a figure in the woods he was well used. I last saw Lucienne playing several characters in the film About Claire and in this film she used the changeable character thing again very well.
The final shots of the film are well done and her smiling face is genuinely unsettling. I don't think the sound on Ben's breathing was well balanced and his POV as the final shot didn't look as good as the rest of the film, but otherwise everything worked very well. Loved the red boldness of the end credits, although I don't think the music worked. Although the detail of the narrative forward and backward is light, the film works because it gets the tone right and feels unsettling and uneasy on its way to a nicely effective conclusion. It has its limits but it works within them well and hits the marks it was looking for pretty well.