- Written and Directed by Brian Patrick Butler
- Stars: Nick Young, Alexandra Slade, Michael C. Burgess
- Run Time: 50 Minutes
- Link: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/342605
Synopsis
We see color footage of a woman smiling on a bridge as credits roll.
Ripping the band-Aid
Everything from here is black and white. We begin in a room full of dead-looking people. One of them gets up, she’s not dead. Diane tries to find a way out of the place she’s in, but all the doors are locked. She finally pries open a door and crawls down an elevator shaft. She can’t escape and eventually passes out from exhaustion.
Boy Meets Girl
Diane wakes up and finds herself staring up at a crazy-looking man with shaving cream on his face. The man, whose name is General Gore, plays a video about how flatworms can be cut up and regenerate into a complete organism. She’s a filmmaker, and she was working on a project when she was rounded up by others outside and led into that room. Everyone up there is either dead or dying.
Gore plays an audio tape and shows her the “End of the World Pact” a document explaining everything. Gore says it’s a miracle that Diane has been able to survive.
The Antidote: A Cure for Sanity
The pair goes off in search of more people by exploring the rest of the bunker. They run into Ferguson, a deformed mutant who tries to merge with Gore. Gore’s nose gets melted, but he has an antidote for that, and he gives Diane a syringe of the stuff. They kill Ferguson, and then Diane gets hallucinations from the drug.
Didi’s Dark Place
Back in color, obviously a flashback, we see part of Diane’s filmmaking work, and she looks very happy. The other girl from the pre-credit sequence is Eva, Diane’s girlfriend. Diane then wakes up as Gore shoots at some rats. They meet Berenger, a character straight from a David Lynch film. Who eats an explosive and… explodes.
Diane then comes across a dog who turns into Eva. Eva attacks her and the General shoots the strange woman, who is not really Eva, in the back.
Synthesis: Or How I learned to Swallow the Elephant
Diane pulls out the “Friend of the World Pact,” which Gore explains was the unworkable. There’s something on a tape about merging beings into one, an “elephantidra.” There’s a bang, and then we see two people in radiation suits walk-in through a bombed-out burning city. When we return to the bunker, we see exactly what’s really going on…
Commentary
It’s all in black and white other than a couple brief scenes. It’s also almost entirely just the two characters in the bunker. It’s very talky, and it could easily be a stage play with only a few sets.
The various makeup effects are really good here, probably due to the black and white film—it’s harder to make some of these things look real in full color.
I can’t exactly say I understand what happened at the end, but it was entertaining getting to that point. The acting was great. I did like it quite a bit, but I think it might take a couple of viewings to actually understand.