Only managed to see this thanks to a shared link a fellow Tumblr fan of Luke Treadaway posted. And also thankfully to the New British Cinema Quarterly which made it available for free during a whole day in its Facebook page. The trailer, which I saw months ago, left me with a good impression so I had to see what's the mystery the director was proposing to his audience with his provoking short film.
"Man in Fear" revolves around Anthony Fox (the amazing Luke Treadaway), an errand and frightened guy who starts the movie running away from something we don't know anything about, enters a restaurant, switches food plates, he's suspicious of everybody and everybody's suspicious of him, and it all stops when he goes to a police station and begs for help. A veteran Sergeant (Tim Healy) is all ears to his story: Anthony believes that someone is trying to kill him by causing accidents after accidents, which he miraculously escaped from them all. Of course, the police officer doesn't buy this story but the increasingly desperate man cries for help, and insists in being helped, even trying to be detained and go to jail, where he thinks he'll be safe from those accidents to happen. Then he starts to offer some hints of what's the source of all those mysterious events, which puzzles us and the officer even more.
The mind behind this project is a very creative one. Will Jewell managed in 11 minutes to tell something interesting, thrilling, with great visual appeal, and touching themes of uncertainty, reality versus imagination and above all, the paranoia that habits some of us. It's all very Kafkian.
It doesn't stop here. "Man in Fear" is about to be made, we hope, into a feature film. It all depends on the accolades and word of mouth this short gets and producers interested into getting involved with the movie. Trust me, it has the potential to be a fantastic movie, to put Hollywood blockbusters into shame. Just small adjustments in the story, make it longer (obviously), stick with the main actor (pleease!) who was perfect and the movie will be greater than this short. I think Hollywood could and should learn with this project. First make a small experiment, see if it's good and then later green-light a bigger project instead of wasting money away. Mr. Jewell definitely has a future in the movie business. 9/10
