HollyShorts 2020 Review – Sometimes the horrors we are asked to face are far too real as in the case of the new short AN OCCURRENCE AT ARVERNE. The short is remarkably simple in message and execution as Marcus (Curtiss Cook Jr.), an African American man darts around a stranger’s empty home taking care of chores as suspicious neighbors look on. As the short continues we are increasingly reminded of the hidden racism still alive and well in America or worse, buried inside ourselves.

Speaking on the phone to his girlfriend Rebecca (Vika Dove) Marcus stops by a home that his friend is offered to watch. With his friend unavailable to stop and feed the cat and close curtains, Marcus agrees to stop by the stranger’s home and handle his buddy’s chores. Things are innocent and on the up and up as Marcus finds the spare key and enters through the basement. They are fine as Marcus bounds through the house, sliding curtains closed in each window, unaware of the leers he is attracting from the neighborhood. There is a mounting sense of danger with each task Marcus handles and we see growing concern just outside.

Robert Broadhurst writes and directs an efficiently tense short that says so much with so little. A subtext, a growing sense of danger, and a brilliant commentary on how much further we have to go as a society shackled with the preconceived notions we might have. This short holds up the horrors that linger inside of us and demands we not only confront them but resolve them too.

See this short the first chance you get and it will stay with you.

7/10 stars