SELF-PORTRAIT
Lewis Rose,
2013
The short film
formula is quite ideal for horror: the brief length allows the genre to indulge
in its penchant for fun-size nightmare-logic and surrealism. A lack of narrative
structure and realism is not necessarily a hindrance to the thing working; the
pleasures of the uncanny can suffice. For example:
My friend Lewis
Rose has made a short film “Self-portrait” which lays out in the corners of the
horror genre, looking the Gothic part and feeling like a variation on ‘The
Portrait of Dorian Grey’ and reminding the viewer perhaps of a ‘Night Gallery’
skit. But ‘Self-portrait’ is not looking for the imposition of terror and an
external threat: rather it finds its horror in basic human anxiety, self-doubt and a simple promise of body-horror. It is even, a little perversely, optimistic and empathising in its
conclusions that the broken image is the one worth embracing.
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