Short Film: It’s in the House

Posted onto YouTube on Halloween 2017, this 5-minute short film, directed by Graham Burrell, is effective and poses as a slasher until the ending.

Starting with a masked man (Joshua Rust) breaking into a house by smashing a window, we then see the home owner (Amisha Datta) come home, unaware that he is there. We see her in the kitchen, him just behind a door, and she nearly spots the broken glass but is distracted as her phone rings. We see, in a newspaper, that people have been vanishing.

in the bathroom

She takes a shower and he walks in to the bathroom, gripping a kitchen knife – but he retreats, perhaps savouring the hunt and the power of his illicit presence. This leads him to hide in a bedroom cupboard and he watches as she stretches a sheet onto the bed… to protect the bed clothes from the body she pulls from another cupboard – the man whose disappearance was reported in the paper, his throat slit…

eyes

The final twist sees her bending to his arm and then, as the shocked would-be killer drops something in the cupboard, turning with a bloodied mouth. The dark pits of her eyes suddenly glowing at the centre… Ok, it’s a massive spoil but me featuring the short gave it away and the film is worth a watch even if you know the twist. At the time of writing there was no IMDb page.