Short Film: Feed Your Muse

From director Brendan Beachman, this 2020 short is just over 18-minutes in length and, despite broadcasting its punches, builds up a nice atmospheric film with a neat little twist in the tail.

Andrew (Zachary Ray Sherman, Blood Wars), is an aspiring writer who has a block. He tells a friend about a yard sale that is due on soon.

The sale is stuff from the estate of a local writer who hit it big with one novel but then stopped. Andrew can’t understand why he wouldn’t write a second and figures there must be manuscripts or notes that he could perhaps use himself. He gets to the sale but the author’s daughter (Jocelyn Hall) suggests there is no undiscovered writing. Andrew spots a strange looking statue – she hates it, her father bought it in Greece and called it his muse.

The statue

The direction of travel isn’t hard to spot. Andrew buys the statue and puts it in his room. He starts to suffer from sleep paralysis, feels tired, drained and has a mark on his chest but is writing, and the writing is inspired. A return to the daughter indicates that after her father finished his book, he put the statue into the attic and never looked at it again. Andrew is working towards a book deal but at night, more and more, he seems to see the statue move until one night it (Kyleigh Hoye) is on his chest…

Zachary Ray Sherman as Andrew

This played neatly with the idea of sleep paralysis and the myth around creatures sat upon the chest. The creature has a long tongue with a barb, which is reminiscent of a couple of myths and I’d suggest the implication is that it is sucking blood but also that there is a transference of lifeforce – this is Faustian in that, in return, he is being given inspiration (noting that American Horror Story connected vampirism and artistry recently, also). The mention of Greece obviously connects to the mythological Muses. All in all, this is a neat little short.

The imdb page is here.