Jill is annoyed with Jack, ignoring his attempts to get her to smile as she drives a city road. She stops for petrol, and while she's filling the tank, he goes into the station's mini-mart and buys a bouquet, chocolates, and a few odds and ends. While she's paying, he sits in the passenger seat, strewing the flowers and things. She pushes away the flowers, starts the car, and resumes driving, staring straight ahead. He peels the paper off a chocolate and sets it on the dash near her hand. She takes it. He sets out another; soon she softens, then, she folds down the visor. Has Jack made things right again? And the tuffet? A young man tries to make things right again in his relationship after he and his girlfriend get in a fight. Jack(Edgerton, charming, who also directs) and Jill(Foulkes, cute) are driving, well, she is, to be more precise, and he's in the front passenger seat. She's annoyed with him – he always takes things too far. A bit of a practical joker, that one. They stop for gas, and he buys her some apology gifts and something else.<br/><br/>This uses its 8 minute running time(not counting the end credits, with, it's 9) well. Everything is established, set up. We're shown with a few shots and seconds everything we need to know about these two, as individuals, together, and each decision and event builds, until we reach the hilarious major punchlines. If you want outrageous, pitch black humor, Aussie productions are definitely the way to go. Production values are solid. Nothing feels like it's on a budget. This is a sweet rom-com about a couple who can get on each other's nerves but who do really love each other. And then that is interrupted by a sudden burst of comedy, which is all the more effective by its surrounding short.<br/><br/>There is some brutal, disturbing content in this. I recommend it to anyone who loves this kind of thing. 8/10 I came to the IMDb page for Spider to see if there was any information about how the special effects were done. For me, this short film was all about one shot.<br/><br/>SPOILERS: While stopping for gas, a man buys several gifts to try to pacify an angry girlfriend. She eventually starts to give in, until the rubber spider hidden in the sun visor falls out and scares her. She stops and gets out of the car, and when the man tosses the rubber spider over to show her it's not real, she jumps back further into the road. In one continuous shot, we see her get hit by another car, which skids to a halt, still in frame, with the driver then getting out. The woman also remains on camera from the moment she gets out of her own car, until the time she is lying on the road. So how did they do that? It must have been computerized somehow, but there aren't any visual clues. It looks seamless.<br/><br/>The ending of the short involves a paramedic getting ready to administer a shot and then getting startled by the rubber spider. He jerks back, and the needle get's stuck in the boyfriend's eye. If that sounds like your brand of twisted humor, than you can only hope the filmmaker, who doubles as a stunt man, continues to make shorts or graduates to feature films. Another short film of his, Lucky, has a similar irony to its twist ending. I guess that makes him a cross between Zoe Bell and M. Night Shamalayan.
Emaliflor replied
364 weeks ago