The Shift (III) (2015) User Reviews

The short could have ended in a more satisfactory way the whole construction of the narrative.

[fernandoschiavi · 7/10 · 21 March 2015]

The Shift is a short film in suburban America in 1964. An ordinary day in the suburbs turns out to be anything but When Joe comes home to find out his wife Betty has not Been cooking dinner. And there's a very good reason for that.

The film begins with Joe coming home as on any given day. Soon he realizes that his wife is not at home and is tied by a woman who makes it clear who is in control from then on. From there, some facts unfold, it is routed to an unexpected end.

What contributes favorably is the interesting soundtrack by Francesco Calabrese and Mark Yaeger, and the art direction, costumes and photography that faithfully reproduce the 60s. Technicolor gloriously conjures' 60s suburbia, Interpretations are also another unquestionable point. The always beautiful and charismatic Molly C. Quinn ("Castle" series) and Ryan Welsh deliver the lead performances. There are still a small Whitney Hoy appearance, as the neighbor couple.

The Shift is an interesting cinematic experience, which could also become a feature film with the necessary adaptations of the script. It's a thriller, which also features scares and also has some visual effects well made.

The screenwriter, producer, editor and director Francesco Calabrese - known by other short films as Lovely Monster (2011) and I Killer (2012) - tried to resolve the surprisingly plot this plot of about 8 minutes, inserting elements of science fiction to end of a thriller that was very well built in the first minutes, perhaps influenced by news of the time in which the story takes place, and the most notorious case of the famous "Area 51", located in the Nevada desert, which began to be built in the 50s and is used with great frequency between 60 and 80. The great thing is that the short could have ended in a more satisfactory way the whole construction of the narrative. Maybe the director should have had chosen maintain the suspense from the beginning to a surprisingly and shocking ending. The audience would feel fear and ill to solve the plot on their own minds while the end was approaching.

Frustrating in that it holds out a lot, but only delivers on it a small amount – but still enough to know it could and should have done it more (SUGGESTIVE SPOILERS)

[bob the moo · 6 March 2015]

In a slice of good old 1950's Americana (white picket fence and everything), Joe comes home to his doting wife Betty to find that not only is dinner not on the table (as is his right), but that their relationship is about to take a fundamental shift.

The Shift is quite a frustrating short film because it manages to have a lot of good in it, while also not making the most of any of it. The design of the film is not the biggest issue, but it is a good example. In many ways the location and design feels like it really is the 1950's, but then at the same time we get a slightly odd color palette, and some performances that really don't fit into the perfect Americana image that everything else is trying to set up. This is not to say that I didn't like this effort, because I did, but the moments that it gets the David Lynch feel right the most, was ironically under the end credits where mostly we were left to look at the superficial perfection with a sense of dread at what we now know is underneath. This is the strength of the film but unfortunately it saves this till the end; instead we get overly dramatic examples of the threat, even if they do not really make any sense (the neighbor dying, the husband being so sure his wife will hurt the woman etc).

This aspect is the guts of the short film and unfortunately the scenes where the husband is restrained etc could all have been done better than they were because I didn't feel that dread clashing with the perfect in the way I liked so much. The delivery is a bit off throughout, and so are the performances – neither actor feels at home in the 1950's, and only one of them has a reason for this. Technically the film is okay, again not sure about the tint on the color, but it has good sound, a good look and, when it wants to, it has a genuine sense of the creepy – I just wish it had done the latter more and for longer.