The good thing about short films is that, even if they’re mildly disappointing, you didn’t waste a lot of viewing time.
But it’s still a little hollow how anti-climactic Sea Devil was, especially after all the hard work the makers put into building up that cinematic, almost epic dread. It was complexly well-edited, including the sound (how many shorts actually have songs playing over the opening credits – or have opening credits?). The body makeup of the first victim was eerie. The acting more than competent.
And then it just fizzles out. There’s not much that drives the plot forward, except for when the principal characters rescue a multiple amputee from the water (which dregs up the cliché of ‘foreigner heeds warnings of doom in words we can’t understand’). Though it’s odd that, for such an overtly cinematic feel, there’s no music cue to accompany it. It just comes out of nowhere, along with the actions of the other characters. Perhaps the filmmakers relied too much on the audience’s expectations of horror movies to fill in the narrative gaps, but it came off as at odds with the atmosphere the short was working so hard to build up.
An Englishwoman in Salem 