Julien Neaves, Caribbean Head Writer
Plot: A man’s decision to take a short cut through a cemetery at night leads into a world of terror.
Review: My three-film recap of the sixth edition of the Trinidad and Tobago Film and Folklore Festival continues with horror short ShortCut directed by Keegan Taylor. And it was an entertaining watch. Leads Seychelle Wong and Christopher Best have a great chemistry as a young couple and Wong’s performance is very natural and believable. The makeup and costuming of the otherworldly cemetery dwellers were also very well done.
Now about the horror aspect of this horror short. Making an effective horror film is like walking a tight rope, and if the scary aspects are not tight enough you end up with unintentional comedy. Unfortunately, ShortCut does fall into this trap on more than one occasion. There is a decent buildup of tension, but the execution was lacking. Or maybe it was intentional comedy. It is hard to say. I also would have appreciated some explanation of how the supernatural cemetery worked and why some of the residents were up and about. And I will not spoil how the film ends, but I will say the team had the perfect setup for a gut punch of an emotional ending but chose the wrong character. I will say no more.
While I had some issues with ShortCut, the short is a decent watch and I look forward to seeing more from Taylor.
Editor Jules’ Score: 6 out of 10
And you can check out more Caribbean short film content below:
Julien “Editor Jules” Neaves is a TARDIS-flying, Force-using Trekkie whose bedroom stories were by the Cryptkeeper, learned to be a superhero from Marvel, but dreams of being Batman. I love promoting Caribbean film (Cariwood), creating board games and I am an aspiring author. I say things like “13 flavours of awesome sauce”. Read more.