Roundly poor effort – some can be attributed to the very low budget and amateurs involved, but it is still poor

A group of friends get together on Halloween night – the girls planning to head out on the town, while the guys stay in. However when something sinister appears to be happening outside, the group find themselves unsure what to do, and while the unseen danger appears to be building outside, tensions and simmering resentments start to rise inside.

This (very) low-budget short film is a reasonably amateur effort which, to be fair, has a good stab at something with the limited resources available to it – and I do not just mean money. The concept is a familiar one, but one that I know can produce very good returns despite being on a low budget – one thinks particularly of the sci-fi film Coherence, where tension is effectively increased and a world created despite being shot within a single front room for the most part. So, to give it its dues, at least Killing Bambi knows that this is something it has going for it. Unfortunately it is not able to pull it off, and the amateur nature of the film does come through in many ways.

Firstly the narrative comes in chunks, with little base, subtlety, or flow. We don't have a gradual build of tension outside – we have big jumps, and events which don't ever feel "real" even within the internal logic of the film. There are potentially striking images (the Bambi of the title) but they are robbed of power by the lacklustre delivery of the scenario from which they stem. For me though the bigger failure is inside the house. Here the drama escalates so quickly, and without a great deal of cohesion to it, that it suddenly feels very melodramatic. I guess it was intended to be a dark comedy, but it is only ever overwrought or (suddenly) silly. The main problem is of course in the writing, but the (almost certainly) amateur cast would probably not have done much with better material – they are broad, clunky, overly dramatic, and the lack of naturalism in their performance does stop the viewer ever getting close to thinking these are people in a situation or real relationships.

With all of this weakness, it does nobody any favours that it runs to 20 minutes; which is pretty long for any short film, but a roundly poor one and that feels like an absolute age. Kudos to those involved for getting the funding, and making their film come together, but there is really no single area where it doesn't need to be significantly better.

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Killing Bambi

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