Fantasia 2024: FACES, Short Film Short Review
Judy is in town, visiting her cousin, when she's invited to a party at Brad's house. Brad, eternally a frat bro, thinks he has an easy mark for a night of sexy fun. But tables are quickly turned and the party is over for Brad.
Blake Simon's short film Faces played in the Small Gauge Trauma program, and is a cool slice of shapeshifting horror which explores the search for identity. As a piece of horror filmmaking Simon’s got skills. There are creepy things off in the distance that only we can see and mildly scary confrontations with the entity. Horror elements are kept at a minimum, either by choice but most likely a necessity because of the short film format and that little, nagging thing called a production budget. The horror elements are, however, amplified by the sound mix from David Alvarez. It makes the most with the tools that its got.
What Faces does that distinguishes itself from other shapeshifting horror bits is that it sets up the entity to be the point of empathy from the viewer. This depends on how well Ethan Daniel Corbett as Brad draws it from you, which is even more important than all the technical acuity that makes Faces a neat looking piece of horror. Cailyn Rice as Judy starts sweet and innocent but as the entity takes over there is a forbidden allure that she conveys, one that Brad cannot resist. Who is the easy mark now?
Brad as a character is at first just another bro in a loud, Hawaiian shirt. But then Corbett has to switch gears as the next incarnation of the entity and portray the unhappiness that it feels about its current embodiment. So soon to be just another piece of personal i.d. added to the pile and it already begins mimicking its next victim. What is different this time around is that in Faces all this bodyswapping feels extra tragic on top of being horrific and creepy.
Faces is also meant to be a proof of concept for the feature-length version of the film. It reminds me of the 2018 horror flick, Lifechanger, and the emotional undercurrents of our friend Justin McConnell's movie. We would definitely be interested to see what kind of balance between horror and emotions Simon would aim for if thew were able to make a feature length version of Faces?
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