Mouse-X (2014) User Reviews

Stay in the Loop

[Hitchcoc · 7/10 · 20 May 2019]

Numerous short films have dealt with the idea that there is more than one of us and if we are in the correct place, we can meet ourselves. This is quite clever as a man realizes there are more of him and they are all doing the same things. I was captivated. The parallel with the little white lab mouse was interesting. And, of course, through most of the film, he wore a white outfit. A lot of fun.

Lab rat

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 23 October 2015]

"Mouse-X" is a 15-minute movie from spring last year and it shows us the attempts of one man to break free of a maze that is full with alternate versions of himself. Will he succeed? Writer and director Justin Tagg is not too experienced (yet?), but he came up with a nice premise here and decent execution, even if I must say that this film should not have been any longer, because it may have started to drag. The plot is fairly simple and hardly enough for a 20-minute film. Lead actor Justin Lee does an okay job and it was a smart idea to have him be completely silent until the final minute of the film. This is one of these films that you maybe need to watch 3 or 4 times to entirely understand all the subtlety and hidden hints. Once is enough for me though. Decent watch and I recommend it.

An enigma wrapped in an allegory, glazed with fingerprint powder and served well done.

[frequency-2 · 9/10 · 13 October 2014]

This is a well crafted short that wiggles around several scifi and philosophical and metaphysical tomes in a clever and interesting way. It slowly accelerates until your scratching your noggin saying, "If that's him, who is he?

It could have easily turned out to be a trite treatment of the above tomes, but the whole things works well for the whole fifteen minutes.

Among all the other questions it raises, how many mice were there?

You can stop reading here, I am still typing so I can make the minimum of 10 lines. I don't want to say anymore about "Mouse X" because I don't want to give anything away.....

to be yourself

[Kirpianuscus · 1 June 2021]

More a film, it seems be a question to the viewer about his certitudes about identity of himself. The theme is not new but, in this case, giving a kafkaiesque story, becomes, scene by scene, fascinating. A man in a room, in an armchair, with The Bible in his hand , a white mouse around. And his discoveries. A wise crafted short Sci Fi, having the gift to be more than good example of its genre.

Thoughtful approach to the human fallacy

[automaddux · 9/10 · 13 November 2016]

Gives a intriguing response to the inner soul and what it means to fear self-exposure. Actor had very good body language that kept it intense, no speaking parts which leaves more room for further thought into what is going on in the scene.

Overall, I thought it was very good. it's only 15 minutes so if you don't like it, it's not like your wasting a bunch of time on it. Just watch it already and stop reading this. I mean it. what are you doing? I said watch the movie already. Jesus, you are so dense. go ahead, read this last part too. What if I started misspelling words on purpose? what that make you stop reding? I through id give it a shoot. anyways hope you enjoy the movie.

The familiar feel, too-long running time and lack of focus on the instance, means it is more about the design than the delivery (TOTAL SPOILERS)

[bob the moo · 26 January 2015]

I recently watched Unedited Footage of a Bear, which is a short film rather than a description of a particularly dull night in the moo household. In that short film there is a moment where a character spies an item of clothing she is currently wearing, following by a sighting of a doppelganger wearing the same clothing sans said item. With that scenario I braced myself for the timeloop of these being the same character and that events would trace back on themselves, and the film actually worked better for not heading down that pretty well worn path. This same aspect is unfortunately why I did have an issue with Mouse-X.

To start with what it does very well – the design. The mirrored rooms, style and mashed up set decoration works very well; producing a sense of weirdness and being out of place and time which does fit the content of the short. In connection to this the construction of the idea and the way the camera captures the same scene from within the single character is good; with the music and oppressive color scheme helping too. Unfortunately this is all in support of a delivery which isn't quite what it needed to be to carry the idea.

See, the problem is that unless this is your first experience of this type of circular time/space plot (which it probably won't be) then you'll more or less see what it is doing very early in the film. However, even if you don't, the film lets us see early on that we have some form of loop or copy here. This means that the overlapping actions work as a a cleverly structured short, but not as an engaging or thrilling on. At 15 minutes it runs too long and everything could have been tighter and more about the moment – because if it had kept me in the moment then the longer game would not have made me feel like I knew what was coming quite as much.

It is a shame because it is very cleverly constructed with nicely overlapping moments and atmospheric design to the whole piece, however the plot device itself will be too familiar, and with not enough to grip you in the moment, and too much to tell you too much, then it is hard not to be at the end of the too-long running time waiting for it to arrive and do what you pretty much know it will do in the end. Questions remain, but are not really explored or enough given to intrigue, so in the end it is a very well made film, which is sadly at its weakest where it matters the most.