DISCLAIMER:
The following short essays contain
MINOR SPOILERS.

Some Dark Matter
Directed by Molly Fisher

Horror

★★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)

Molly Fisher’s Gothic horror short Dark Matter picks up seconds before a man has a stroke during dinner at a restaurant, after which we watch his family deal with his sudden passing. The man’s cremated and while one of his daughters along with his wife seem broken up about his death, his other daughter doesn’t seem so affected. That is until later when the seemingly unaffected daughter’s alone with her thoughts. Then we see just how haunted by her father’s death she is, as his spirit lingers with her in a far different sense than it does with her mother and sister.

Dark Matter doesn’t waste any time to get its point across through brief Gothic horror. The daughter’s grief comes across as classic Gothic, too. She longs for more time with her father, smelling an item of his clothes to get a few more moments with him, if only on an olfactory level. There’s a lot of charm in the way Fisher reverses the daughter’s initial sense of fear when it seems dad has returned as a silent, shadowy figure in a hotel room. The finale is a compassionate, truthful perspective on ghosts that’s heartbreaking when the daughter wishes, like she does while sniffing dad’s clothes, that she could have just one more moment with dad, no matter if that means he’s in an unexpected, frightening form.

The Man & The Scarecrow
Directed & Written by Justin Knoepfel
Starring Jacob A. Ware & Kelly Grago

Drama / Thriller

★★★★★ (out of ★★★★★)

Justin Knoepfel’s short dramatic thriller The Man & The Scarecrow follows a man (Jacob A. Ware) after the loss of someone special in his life. We see the man packing up a box full of things belonging to a woman called Michelle (Kelly Grago). He’s been reading a book about overcoming grief, as well. He’s all alone and depressed, but around him are signs of a once happy home, such as a Hers and His set of fall scarecrow dolls on the doorstep. One day, the man sees an eerily human scarecrow at the roadside, so he takes it home. The scarecrow quickly takes Michelle’s place. All too soon, the man has to deal with external perceptions of his new living arrangement when someone unexpected turns up at his door.

Knoepfel’s short is a psychological horror as much as a dramatic thriller, especially once it gets to the end and the extent of the man’s delusions about the scarecrow are fully evident. There’s something sweet for a time about the man’s life brightening up with the addition of the scarecrow to his home while they watch TV, picnic, and sit on the porch together like a real living couple. Once we discover that Michelle’s not dead and an annulment is on the table, things take on a strange, more disturbing tone. In the end, the man gets what Michelle says he’s always wanted: “a brainless wife” and “playing house.” The final surreal moments of The Man & The Scarecrow show how deeply the mind can be troubled by losing somebody, though also how a lot of men aren’t often grieving a loss when they’re broken up with, they’re only grieving a loss of control over a woman.