MicroCinema Scene

What if the things little kids see in the dark in their room at night are real?  That’s the premise of John Correll’s effectively creepy short Nothing in the Dark.  It appears to have been shot on black and white film MOS with audio dubbed later.  The post-audio work actually increases the unsettling feeling as a little girl, played well by Emma Berwich, tries to convince herself that the shadowy figure in the room is not real.

As a parent, I’ve laid next to my kids in their bed when they’ve struggled going to sleep and when you look around their room at all of their toys and stuffed animals and action figures in the dark, all of which are completely harmless in the light, you can see how they can quickly become something sinister when cast in shadows and half-light.  You realize just how easily it is for a child’s imagination to get the best of them.

That approach works exceptionally well under Correll’s directorial eye as he forces you to look through the little girl’s eyes at the room around her.  As she scans her bedroom with a flashlight passed her dolls and figurines, you’re just waiting for the light to show something different, something just not right.  Eventually it does.

Nice work by Correll to take a very simple idea and create a foreboding sense of anticipation as we, like the girl, try to convince ourselves that there’s “nothing in the dark.”

Four Stars.

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