Chelsea Lupkin
A gripping psychological thriller that keeps you on edge for the duration of its 11-minute runtime, writer and director Caleb Philips (Other Side of the Box) proves you don’t need much to pull off a sophisticated scare. When a woman wakes up with no memory and a man tied up in the backseat, all she can rely on is a mysterious tape recorder with her own voice to tell her what to do next. An ominous bite-size horror, Philips masters the art of dread and hints at a storyverse that feels much bigger than the world on screen in his latest short film Play Me.
Two characters, one car, and a pitch black desert are all that’s needed here to create an isolated environment for a truly hair-raising situation. Cinematographer Laura Jansen employs a cat-and-mouse approach, playing with what is visible and what remains hidden in the darkness, to mirror the psychological conundrum of the film’s lead as she navigates who she can trust: herself or her prisoner. “I wanted to deliver a satisfying thriller ‘snack’. Something that throws you in and out with some clever twists,” Philips tells Short of the Week.
Lead actress Lindsey Garrett gives an absolutely captivating performance of some kind of compromised intelligence agent.
While Philips’ on-screen story is a modest chamber piece, it portrays a world much bigger. An alien movie without being an alien movie, it dives into a conspiracy theory about how extraterrestrials have remained under the radar. “There’s a whole world of memory-related monsters and agents trained to combat them behind this small story. A Men in Black-like organization that is barely keeping the world, and their own minds, together”, the writer/director reveals. Yet Philips keeps this on the fringes of his narrative and adds a mysterious element that makes Play Me that much more interesting.
A truly compelling horror film, don’t let Play Me’s runtime fool you – it’s an altogether goosebump inducing watch that will keep your heart rate elevated right up until its tense conclusion. With this short the second piece from Philips to feature on our platform, it comes as no surprise to hear that the filmmaker is now focused on developing feature film scripts. We can’t wait to see how they develop.