Short Film: Crave

This is a short film of around 8-minutes length, directed by Carl Shanahan and released in 2017 and is a nicely put together short.

It starts with three people sat in a derelict looking room that is a ghost of its formal glory. They are lined up, waiting room style, and made up of a nervous looking man, Rob (Kris Fisher), a woman (Katie Villa) toying with a cross on a chain, whilst praying, and a second man (James Cotter) holding flowers.

A man (David Warren) exits the adjoining room, looking shaky on his legs and indicates the next should go in. It’s Rob. He walks into the room and meets Edmund (Joe Hancock). Wearing a brown suit, with a bow-tie but no shoes or socks, he welcomes Rob. For his part Rob mentions the flowers the other man has brought, sweet replies Edmund but unnecessary, whilst handing over cash and a photo of a woman (Muirenn Brady).

Rob's perception

Edmund explains how this will work. He will put a song on from a record and *it* will end when the song ends. We see Rob’s perception with the woman lent over him, then we see her eyes are white, dead, and we see the reality of Edmund, now vamped, at Rob’s throat. Its really clever, the vampire using its powers of mind manipulation to encourage people to pay him to suck their blood and feed their fantasies. It’s been done elsewhere (for instance, whilst produced later, Dracula offers Lucy a choice of dream as he feeds from her in the 2020 release) but this feels particularly mercantile and has overtones (to me) of Philip K Dick.

Edmund feeds

Edmund is careful with his customers, however, he won’t let Rob return until his body has recovered from this feed – one imagines how such a transaction might become addictive for the dreamer. One also has to ask why a devout Christian (such as the woman outside) would become drawn into such an arrangement? Perhaps the short will explain – after all it is embedded below and is a satisfying little foray into the mercantile vampire.

The imdb page is here.