Unhinged (2007)

User Rating:

6.4/10   

Directors:

Gregg Holtgrewe
Tim Holtgrewe (co-director)

Writer:

Gregg Holtgrewe (writer)

Genre:

Short | Horror | Thriller

Tagline:

Your Past Can Kill You

Plot:

A thriller about a sparring couple who's evening turns into a fight for survival when their car is hijacked. The film is edited into jagged shards, creating a feeling of reality versus memory.

Plot Keywords:

Cram | Salmen | Kidnapping | Holtgrewe | Wholecrue

Cast

Paul Cram	...	Blue ski mask
Katie Guentzel	...	Sam
Ben Jardine	...	White ski mask
Alex Moros	...	Red ski mask
Danny Salmen	...	David

Runtime:

61 min | USA:16 min

Country:

USA | Canada

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

Stereo

Filming Locations:

Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

Company:

Wholecrue Productions

The art of independent short film...

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Unhinged accomplishes much in its short, fifteen minute time span. While we get to know little about the main characters—protagonists and villains alike—it is the claustrophobic feel of the setting, lighting, direction, and editing that truly makes this film.

In addition to the fact that our heroes, if they can be called that, spend a hefty portion of the film locked in a trunk, it is the mise en scène that really connects the audience with the events in the story. In nearly every shot, some "thing" is used to decrease the frame, to hold captive the characters. Often it is the contrasting shadows that slither over the faces of the victims and their villainous counterparts, giving a hellish noir feel, but it is also a tunnel bridge that suspends over a car moments before the attack begins. It is the slice of the frame that cuts the characters heads from their bodies (figuratively, of course).

The hyperkinetic editing boosts the stifling encounters; quick, almost frantic cuts of legs, arms, faces, and lights enhance the feeling of desperation, of the lack of control that the protagonists feel—and in the end, that we, as the audience, feel.

The plot is effective in demonstrating the weakness that victims of violence feel, but there is something else. While the story begins quite definitely with the protagonists' point-of-view, it is near the half-way to three-quarter mark that we are given access to the antagonists. In an extended (for a film this short) scene where the victims are locked in the trunk of a car and are beating on the metal from the inside, we are not granted their thoughts but the camera stays on the driver of the car, the kidnapper, who is awaiting his cohorts. In a series of close-ups (framed in darkness and dull, yellowed light), we see his humanity: This man is panicking. As an otherwise uninvolved citizen approaches the banging sound in the car, we know there is only one thing the driver can do.

This film does not seem to be fully involved when it comes to plot. It is not a character study, no matter how much we empathize with the victims and the villains. What this film seems to be, though, is an exercise in a single emotion. Fear. And in this, Unhinged is a definite success.

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