If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Don't Believe the Hype

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

"Blue Season" is a 5-minute short film from 5 years ago written and directed by the fairly young, yet prolific Georgina Higgins. The cast is fittingly small for the runtime and we only have a girl and a guy in here. The female is trapped hanging upside down, but apparently taken hostage. We hear a guy call and it seems he can help her to get free. Looking at what he does, it seems like she is inside some kind of computer program. And looking at how well he knows her prison, it should come as no surprise when in the end a plot twist is revealed that shows him as the bad guy. The title "Blue Season" feel really random. Of course, it's the first letters of the girl he is playing this bizarre game with, but it still will not really explain why "blue season". Anyway, pretty mediocre short film that leaves more questions open than it actually explains and is not as atmospheric to make up for that. Not recommended.

Although it doesn't manage to get the line of dialogue quite right, this short film was made as part of a challenge where you are given a title, a line and a prop to get into a short film – and then you have 48 hours to write it, film it, edit it and deliver it. I have seen a few of these and few are perfect but most impress in terms of what was done with so little (planning, time, money, whatever). Blue Season opens with a young woman hanging upside down when a wrong number happens to contact her – before he hangs up she cries for help, which he gives remotely the best he can.There is an solid 5 minute thriller here but unfortunately, while okay, this short lacks the polish and refinement to make it work. It is not in one area that this is the case but rather it is across the board. The writing; the concept is good and offers plenty of danger and mystery to draw the viewer in, however it is an odd serious of plot decisions. For example the wrong number device doesn't work as well as a deliberate rescuer would, while the escape itself doesn't have much tension or substance to it. The rush to urgency is also pretty odd – the score rises the film higher than the material and it feels over done – in particular the building noise towards an ending that we "got" 30 seconds ago already.The lack of cohesion in delivery jars as well – the wrong number guy being the best examples; he jumps too quickly to pouring with sweat and too much is made of that with close-ups and the camera. His performance was not great either, although Ridley was good apart from some of her early clunky dialogue. The ideas here are all fine, but it jumps around a lot and maybe doesn't always construct the ideal way. It is understandable perhaps to have issues with a film made under such competition restrictions, but it doesn't mean that the film doesn't still have them at the end of the day.

I put the spoiler warning on because in a five minute film you can easily give away most of the plot but I don't think this review gives away any major details.The basic plot line of this short film is that Sarah wakes up to find herself hanging upside-down in a small room. She begins screaming for help before she hears a phone ringing. She picks it up and the person on the other end helps her escape. This film was originally made for a forty-eight hour film competition in London. Although it is only five minutes long, I found myself tense for most of the film. There was much left unexplained about what happened and I think that there is definitely potential for this to be hashed out into a feature length film.It will also be interesting to see what becomes of this film now that its star, Daisy Ridley has been cast in the upcoming Star Wars movie. It could be that her fame helps get this publicity to make it a bigger movie.