Rob Munday
Valentine’s Day is never something I’ve been a big fan of. The cold-hearted cynic in me sees it as nothing more than a marketing ploy to boost flower/card sales, while the short film programmer in me doesn’t really know what to do with it – we’re not exactly flooded with innovative rom-coms at Short of the Week. Thankfully, producer and friend of the site Anna Hargreaves (Sex Ed, Pregnant Pause) made my life easy this year by sending Chloë Wicks’ dark and alluring short Aftertaste our way.
The story of a couple of friends who finally hook up after years of flirting, Aftertaste is perfect Valentine’s Day viewing. A seductive, palpable piece, it’s brimming with passion and danger and skirts around genre-definition to keep viewers intrigued and excited throughout. Looking to make a short that could “straddle a line between warm, hopeful romantic-comedy and moody, dangerous genre”, Wicks was excited by the tonal challenge in this idea but she initially struggled with “finding the right story vehicle for that, and sort of gave up”.
“Moll’s violently physical need for blood naturally sits in conflict with her desire” – Wicks’ reveals the twist in the tale early on, as we witness Moll hungrily drinking blood from her fridge.
Thankfully, after she stopped trying to find the right narrative for this premise, Aftertaste’s lead character and her situation appeared in her head, fully formed one evening, an experience Wicks describes as “a good lesson in unclenching as a writer and not overthinking”. Using the genre framework to explore romantic relationships, the director took inspiration from her own experiences of these dynamics, as she explains when discussing the origins of her short:
“The awkward, delicious early stages of a new romance have such high stakes – you don’t want to put a foot wrong or reveal anything too strange about yourself for fear it will spook the other person. Our private self is so much more vulnerable and idiosyncratic than the often shinier, harder-edged social selves that we project. Vampirism struck me as an intriguing way into these ideas, as Moll’s violently physical need for blood naturally sits in conflict with her desire to be gentle with the person she cares about”.
Aftertaste is one of those films where you think you know where it’s going but looks to subvert expectations at every turn. In a way, the film feels as if it’s toying with its audience, in much the same way you might expect a vampire to toy with its prey. There are numerous moments where you expect Moll to reveal her fangs and pierce the jugular on Alfie’s neck, but that isn’t what Wicks’ film is all about. “I wanted to make something where the horror is actually kind of a facade”, the director reveals when we quizzed her on the aims of making Aftertaste. Before adding that “those elements help us understand the stakes but ultimately they fade away to give space for something that’s much more human and real”.
Joe Dempsie and Jessica Brown Findlay as Alfie and Moll in Aftertaste
And however strange it may sound, it’s the authenticity and believability that make this such an unusual and effective short. By that, I don’t mean you need to believe in vampires for it to work, but you do need to believe in Moll and Alfie, you need to believe in their connection and you need to believe in the danger of the situation. Jessica Brown Findlay and Joe Dempsie do an excellent job in bringing their characters to life (are vampires alive?), the chemistry between them instilling the film with its passionate atmosphere and raising the stakes of the night. While Wicks’ cinematic approach – low-lighting, close-up photography, patient edit and minimalist score – immerses you in the film’s steamy embrace (like a voyeur) and amplifies the tension, right up until that electric final scene.
Filmed over two days just before the pandemic hit, Aftertaste played a number of short film festivals (London Short Film Festival, British Shorts Festival), along with some more genre-specific events (Frightfest, Grimmfest), before releasing online. A real showcase of Wicks’ talent, it’s no real surprise to hear that following this short the filmmaker has a number of projects in the works across film and television.