My word, what an eerie little bit of 3 minutes. You can tell this was made on the cheap, with much of the budget scrapped from the camera equipment, lighting, and wardrobe budgets. But bloody hell if it doesn’t make the sound of a single piano note any creepier than it’s always been. And its simplicity – dark hallways, bare-bones score, no dialogue – is its strength.
I’m happy it doesn’t go for a cheap jump-scare at the end (the predictable ending of 90% of horror shorts). The tracking shots and composition are suitably sinister. It’s well-paced (I’ve seen minute-long shorts that felt dragged out), and its wordless script means it can terrify universally.
(SPOILERS)
And because it does end on a question mark, what we don’t know makes it that much scarier. We’ve no idea what the entity is or what it wants. It could go anywhere from there – the fact that there’s an intruder at all is frightening enough.
An Englishwoman in Salem 