Short Film Spotlight: The Follow-Up

Two years ago, a short film director contacted me with a comment on the blog. He hoped that I would find the time to have a look at his latest short film. And even though I didn’t — and still don’t — review short films, I did find the time to watch his short film. It was discussed in the first-ever ‘Short Film Spotlight,’ within which I also discussed another short film that I really enjoyed from a filmmaker who had approached me on Reddit. Now, in 2019, both filmmakers have reached out to me again, so, I thought I should give my readers an update on their careers by writing about their latest short films.

The Apartment, Directed by Nikhil Bhagat

The last time I heard from Nikhil Bhagat was when he reached out to me on Reddit to discuss Scorsese’s Silence. One thing led to another, and, suddenly, he asked me to have a look at his short film, which I wrote about in the previous Short Film Spotlight-article.

This year, he contacted me about the animated short above — The Apartment — and he wanted to hear what I thought about it. In short, like I wrote on Reddit, I loved it. It has a very simple animation style that I really dig. It is a muscle-tighteningly tense animated horror short with excellent and effective sound design. The scares are all effective, but the best of them all has to be the Insidious-like shot towards the end of the short film. Check it out above.

The Tattooist, Directed by Michael Wong

Michael Wong is the filmmaker who made me want to write another Short Film Spotlight. A couple of years ago, he reached out to me about his short film The Story of 90 Coins, which I called a ‘wonderfully charming short film’. Those words do not describe his newest project The Tattooist, which is a horror ‘micro short film’. In less than two minutes, Wong presents you with a pretty cool premise. It is a horror short that I’m sure fans of the genre would like to see a longer version of, as it presents you with an acclaimed tattoo artist who holds customers hostage and tortures them. It doesn’t hold anything back in the energetic but gory 80-second runtime which is, surprisingly, powered by a jazzy musical theme. Check it out above.

– Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.