Tuesday, February 01, 2022

Short Film: In Extremis



This was a 14-minute short film directed by Gregory Crosbie and released in 2014 and what I particularly liked about it was that, as well as being thoroughly effective in a short space of time, it had a wonderfully interesting idea at the heart of it.

It starts with a museum curator (Struan Rodger) and a night watchman (Sean Biggerstaff) descending into the museum’s basement. The basement isn’t the watchman’s normal duty station but the normal guards the curator employs aren’t available. The watchman is told to sit at his post and to mind his business. There is an alarm, only to be used in the case of intruders.

Sean Biggerstaff as the watchman

The guard becomes bored and curious and explores a little – the basement seems to be made up of rooms with the entrances bricked up, though in one (still open) he sees building material and a grey brick engraved with the word consecratus. The doorways that are bricked up have the special bricks within the brick work, set in a pattern like a cross. As he explores he hears a voice (Mairead Whyte), which sounds like a child is trapped behind the bricks.

lick blood

I will have to spoil by saying that the voice is a ruse, a creature trying to be released. It is listed in the credits as a ghoul (Aaron Jeffrey) but, as I have relayed many times, there is crossover between ghoul and vampire. In this case it is decrepit due to incarceration, managing to cut the watchman’s leg and then crawl after him. However, it was held in by consecrated bricks, it lives forever, it is intelligent enough to employ a ruse and it licks up spilt blood – traditionally vampires are blood drinkers and ghouls carrion eaters. What becomes of the watchman – that you’ll have to watch the short to see.

The imdb page is here.

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