Xchange

I saw this in London at the Frighfest. Scary stuff! Not the usual horror short your used to see at festivals. Looks like a high budget movie, maybe because it's shot in high definition. Mediums, hypnosis, experimental psychiatry - there's a bit of everything in there. But what's great about it is has a great twist in the end. It is unusual to see this kind of stuff at horror film festivals with all that gore. Clean, well directed and with lots of tension throughout, could well be the prologue to a feature. The actors are unknown but they are very effective, especially the guy who leads the group of mediums. It is shot in sort of a slow pace, but when it's over you want to watch it again.

I don't know if it is the style with which this story is told, or the atmosphere the directors have been able to create... I was just forced to watch it over and over again. As you go through it you don't care so much about what is happening because the camera guides the viewer as the plot builds up. It is clear that it is a small budget, but it really doesn't show its lack of resources: each frame looks beautifully photographed, every line of dialog is in the right place and more than anything else it introduces a new rather frightening angle on dreaming and nightmares, suggesting that they are not occurring randomly but rather as creatures of the mind that can migrate. When the short ended I was so intrigued that I tried to imagine what could have happened next. It's definitely a new brand of horror, or perhaps of supernatural because violence during the story is very discreet and played more on a detail level, on what the characters say and what happens in the background. Strange to see this coming from Italy.

just saw this on DVD for the first time and enjoyed it all the way through. I'm not particularly fond of horror movies and I don't think this one quite fits the genre. It's more about dreaming and it has a sophisticated metaphoric undertone. What I found appealing is the minimalist, apparently slow setup, in sharp contrast with the violence of the underlying theme. A psychiatrist in a silent, well lit room discusses a strange problem with her fatigued patient: a nightmare that keeps on coming back where the man gets killed no matter how many attempts he makes at hiding from his nemesis. The killers address him with a loop and accept no interaction whatsoever as their goal remains that of getting rid of the intruder. The patient's problem is not so much being killed in the dream, but the fact that his sleep keeps on shortening as his pursuers catch him right after he falls asleep. The psychiatrist decides to hypnotize him and to follow him in the dream. I thought this to resemble a sequence out of a longer movie that probably the producers could never realize for some reason. There were other very interesting shorts I saw with this one, but none that had such a style.

Very few times I've seen movies that triggered fear at such a subtle level. As to shorts, I cannot remember any. This little (only by length) Italian short does it. It's creepy, but not in the way you would expect from a horror. You never really see overt violence, gory shots. It's all set up to hit it at the mind level. This guy turning to the camera and looking at you, you won't forget about it easily. I looked at their website, there is a lot of work behind this short and it seems that they are exploring a new niche in the genre. They are interested in monsters that reside in the mind, more than graphically portrayed creatures. It's beautifully directed, almost with a formal excess that is not typical "horror". The lighting in the room of the séance is fantastic. You feel like you are right there. I wonder what they are going to do next.

Strange to see a short movie shot like a Hollywood classic of the 50-60s! There's a guy who gets killed every time he sleeps and a psychiatrist who tries to get to his dream before it hits again. Looks like typical Twilightzone-like stuff, instead they shot it like a very stylish documentary - really scary at times, gives you a whole new perspective on where nightmares come from (not from Freudian fears or childhood ghosts, but traveling bad dreams sabotaging a mind after the other). I saw in Sitges and the audience loved it. Lasts about 10 minutes, feels much shorter cause it really catches you, then leaves a strange feeling after. Good job and not another splatter short at last!