Review of La cruz

La cruz (2012)
All in the quickness, the tonal shift and the urgency to reveal
23 February 2014
This short film starts with a simple domestic scene – a father teaching his daughter to try on the hilly mountain roads around their town. We learn that he and the girl's mother separated badly and that the daughter is seeing her dad behind her mother's back, just to avoid the drama. All is gentle until the girl believes she sees a figure on the road, then everything quickly changes.

This short film is all about a dramatic and sudden change in tone. You can see from the genre listing here that the film is classed as a horror and I guess in a way it is but for me it is more a thriller because the key thing that makes it work is that it goes from 0-60 in a very short period of time. The nature of the change I am really loathe to talk about but if you sit far away from it and think about it, it perhaps doesn't make too much sense and doesn't really ring true as to how things would have happened. This may be the case though but the film never gives you that distance because it flips things so quickly and then continues to escalate them that you are carried along and before you know it the film is over.

The intimacy of the piece and the pace of direction is very well done by Evangelio and it produces a very enjoyable short thanks to it hitting hard and fast. It is not perfect and it has its flaws but the manner of delivery keeps you close and moving so they are less evident and make the film work despite them.
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