4 gibbles out of 5

Stare at this poster for nine minutes.

Director: Nash Edgerton

I’ve elected to see a handful of short films.  Generally they act as a template for something – they hint at the creator’s interests, probably / perhaps show some of their skills with the ol’ “cam” (which is what we in the professional blogging business get to call cameras) (“professional blogging business” what we in the “self-serving blogging” world call our blogs) (“blogs” being a horrible, horrible term), and generally they are… okay.  They’re just a taste.  They can be great, but it’s generally something that’s nice to have as an extra on a DVD for research but you’ll probably only watch it once.

Nacho Vigalondo- who made Timecrimes – had a short film on the Timecrimes DVD that I feel elevates the genre.  Because it ended up being better than his debut film in many ways – it was a more compressed snapshot of what he brought to his movie and the sort of pointlessness that became inherent in the film was totally okay in a short.

Nash Edgerton’s “Spider” takes that up even one more step.  It shows his skill with the sort of woozy, yet focused visuals he would apply in his tense feature-length ‘The Square,’ but as that film was pitch-perfect in its execution of a genre and in using the film medium to tell a story, so is “Spider” just a great short.  It’s written to be a short (not a template for something larger), it’s paced like a short, and it ends in just enough time for it to be fun to watch again.  It can’t be too burdened with meaning by its very nature, but it packs a perfect punch to make you eager for more.