South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival – What if you could go on a retreat to have a second chance at a happy childhood? Would you embark on such an unusual journey? That’s the premise of Will Seefried‘s short Homesick. It’s a strange and unusual 15 minutes, with plenty of bizarre and even funny moments.

Eduardo (Hiram Delgado) seizes that chance at a second childhood. A man with a ponytail (Tom Nelis) instructs him to strip in a hotel room. From there, he wraps himself in a white body bag and undergoes some strange sort of rebirth that resembles body horror and those scenes in The Matrix with the human feeding pods. When Eduardo wakes up, he has a new mom (Leslie Fray) and dad (Motell Gyn Foster).

After the birth scene, the short gets weirder and weirder. There’s just something uncanny about a grown man wearing children’s pajamas. Yet, mom and dad shower him with affection and even reenact Christmas morning, but it can’t last. The retreat is only temporary, but the few scenes we have of Eduardo as a big kid are both comical and unsettling, especially when he sleeps in bed with his new parents. They look just as uncomfortable as he is. Still, based on Eduardo’s frequent anguished expressions, it’s clear he harbors some memories of a miserable childhood or maybe the feeling that the love he’s shown is fleeting. If the short has one flaw, it’s that it never delves enough into his actual childhood. If this ever becomes a full-length, it’s likely that will be explored.

Homesick has more than one awkward and odd scene. It’s a cool premise and generally well-executed. There’s a lot of feature-length potential here and room to explore Eduardo’s source of unhappiness. In these 15 minutes, there’s more than one memorable scene. Oh, and grow men should never wear children’s pajamas. Just don’t do it, please.

6 Out of 10