Meridian

I see the other reviews on here and I laugh because this short is not meant to be good or bad! Its sole purpose is to test Picture Quality for streaming platforms. It was developed for Netflix.

It is shot in 4K at 60 frames per second and uses HDR10/ Dolby Vision and was mastered at a peak brightness of 4000 nits or Candela per square metre.

There are reasons the story makes no sense. Just a showcase of demo reference material.

Basically it's not intended for a normal audience.

But if you have a really good tv or reference monitor you can appreciate it for what it is.

While a short film this is also a test run by Netflix to see how it works across various algorithms. Netflix produced "Meridian" as test footage to evaluate anything from the performance of video codecs to the way Netflix streams look like on 4K TVs.

Style over substance. Great period setting, the guy playing the police captain was perfect for the part... and the setup was intriguing. But once he goes into the cave... meh! Like they didn't have a real idea, just the setup (see Yellowbrickroad). Also, the 'girl' was just mundane pretty... nothing weird or unearthly about how she looked... needed someone 'scary pretty'... Tilda Swinton or Amanda Plummer-ish.

Really interesting short film that harks back to a time when they really new how to build tension through subtlety rather than jump scares.

Very much in the vein of the excellent mystery shows of the 50s/60s, with the obvious influence being The Twilight Zone.

Leaves you wanting more.

I give this 2 stars because I reserve 1 star for "worst ever made". This doesn't quite get there, but it's close.

This 11 minute short starts out interesting and looks like it's going somewhere. But then it hits the ground like cow poo. Plop. "Story" over... except there's no story. It's one of those "Let the audience figure it out" flicks... but there's nothing to figure out. Zero. Nada. No clues or hints or even the faintest whiff of anything. The only thing it has going for it is the appearance of an attractive woman. Those dames come a dime a dozen and you'll get a nickel in change. (Sorry, couldn't resist slipping in the 40's reference).

Videos like this don't belong on Netflix. This is something we'd see on a low-rating YouTube short, not a paid-subsription video presentation. Don't waste your time. It's not even worth the 11 minutes (or 9 minutes, because about 2 of those are end credits).