Short Film: Familiar

This short film was in the third block of shorts presented in the Killer Valley Horror Film Festival and is a ten-minute piece directed by David J. Ellison and released in 2021. It is also a rather marvellous little short, thanks in great part to the central performance.

The film takes place in Pennsylvania on 1942 and, in a large mansion, we meet Richard Mason (Hugo Nicolau). He sits on his bed, an air of dejection surrounding him, as a gramophone plays – the song has the lyric “If I didn’t care” and it seems apropos and as Mason has no dialogue through the film it seems to speak for him. A distant voice can be heard, begging to be let out.

bringing lunch

We see Mason in a bathroom, his ribs are apparently sore and he has a cut to his face. We see him iron his clothes and then we see him enter the mansion (having gone out) carrying a heavy burden on his shoulder, clearly a body wrapped up. The burden is taken into the basement and he pulls the wrapping back to reveal her (Milda Cuplinskaite) face. Again we see him sat on the bed, the strain he feels is palpable. A scream reverberates around the mansion and he runs and slams his door shut, then retreating deep into his room and in obvious mental anguish – the door opens and there is a mist and we see a pov rush at him.

mental anguish

And here we have the power of the short and it all emanates from Hugo Nicolau’s physical performance. We know he is tortured by what he is expected to do, we also know that he is physically abused by the vampire (Rick Wiltshire). Some is communicated by cuts but much is communicated in the actor’s art and it feels pitch perfect – bravo. So what of the vampire.

neck wound

We know it is a vampire, or at least vampiric, and the film offers us tropes. Mason goes to remove the corpse of the victim we saw him bring and, as he looks at her corpse, he turns her head exposing her damaged neck. This vampire rips the neck open. We see mist appear connected to the vampire and there is some suggestion that it controls the weather (specifically thunder). When we see it at a distance we see a hulking monstrosity that might have once been a man.

the Vampire

Up close we see that it is truly monstrous but ultimately this film isn’t about the vampire, but the vampire’s familiar. There have been numerous examples of a vehicle concentrating (or heavily referencing, sometimes) the vampire’s servant and we get a range of views, including several with the servant being disenchanted with their lot. Nothing I can think of has captured the familiar horrified at their lot in life as well as this. How will the relationship go? The answer, as always, is in the short.

The imdb page is here.