A young girl is scared that a monster she has just drawn will eat her and her grandfather in their sleep. The grandfather does not disagree, but claims this just can't happen, because he's the chief of all monsters. "Ultimomostro" starts this way, with a few words exchanged minutes before turning off the lights. Only, the little girl and the old man are seemingly very serious about this, this is obviously not just a joke to exorcise the nephew's fears before she goes to sleep. You know that something in what they just said must be real, only you don't know which part - yet. It mustn't be easy to condense in ten minutes of film a complete, organic idea that also has some interesting idea as its basis. Sometimes ideas hang halfway in a short movie, although you sense the concept in it could have really turned out great given more time and resources. This is what made me like this little movie. It's simple, and draws from the well known concept of childhood fears with a new angle on their claim that monsters do exist, only adults can't see them. I wish the authors had developed that concept further and let the young girl somehow have a bigger role in the second half of the short, while you somehow lose part of the atmosphere and chemistry built in the beginning when the focus shifts on the grandfather only. It would have been fun watching the two of them together in the ultimate face off.
2 Reviews
Best way to fight your monsters is to bring one on your side
brandodragonberg1 July 2015
I enjoyed the central idea in this movie that a simple way to fight the invisible monsters in one's childhood is actually to enlist one of them as your defender. It's a pretty original take on the theme of childhood fear and something I haven't seen so simply, yet coherently developed in a short movie in a while. This is clearly not your typical high budget, fully cast short. As a matter of fact, the end credits are so short that you really begin to wonder who really took part in this production. But, be it the casting choices or the atmosphere that the directors have been able to recreate, it works for most part. The location where they shot it is also interesting: a long corridor with arabesque tiles on the floor, obviously a real apartment rather than a studio set. I found the idea of the high wall filled with dark drawings a very effective way to explain what is actually going on, and some of the pictures are actually kind of scary. Where the short is probably a bit lacking, for the obvious budgetary constraints typical of short movie productions, is in the special effects department. I appreciated the simplification in the story structure and in the basic concept of the movie, but I would have expected a scarier, more elaborate monster. Or not to see it all.
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