Review of 'Heavensong' which can be found here on Daily Motion (Though the embedded video is from YouTube as the Daily Motion one had audio glitches in it)
Length: 03:22
Logline: Set to a lyrical poem, a young girl makes her way into the woods leaving an unsettling scene behind.
Reminiscent of 'Magnolia', this short is based around a single poem which is sung to beautiful piano heavy music which sets the tone and mood from opening titles to end credits. Following a sedate pace, the story cleverly unfolds and plays with audience expectations rather nicely.
There's no scares in this horror. It's more of a gradual revealing of something unsavoury yet structurally, it gives itself away at midpoint which possibly goes against genre. The classic neck wound and the adjoining lyrics will leave you in no doubt that the little girl is a vampire, and as I suspected, a cold hearted killer. This kind of leaves the later fang reveal a little damp. In the final scene, the girl, played by a very effective Ebony storm, crosses the forth wall and directs her song straight to the audience. This adds a new dimension as her Mona Lisa smile (which could possibly just have been caused by a mouthful of fangs) leaves the audience trying to redefine the emotion of the piece.
Excellent cinematography, lighting, colouring and camera quality all add to the darkly layered feel and the visuals complement the lyrics very well. Extra points also for the nice typography and illustrations of the end credits. A very subtle and interesting film.
Best Bit: Soundtrack.
Worst Bit: The little girl joins in the singing at the end.
Final thought: That travel case wasn't shut right. Plenty of sunlight getting through.
Read a condensed review of this film on Twitter here.
No comments:
Post a Comment