South by Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival – Blink is a tense 10 minutes that leaves you starving for more. As Mary (Sophie Thatcher) wakes up, she finds herself in a hospital bed unable to move. a network of wires and tubes monitors her status and sustains her wellbeing. How did she get here? Why is she unable to move? What is the strange boney creature that leers at her from the dark corners of the room? The short gives us just enough information to understand the scene, the threat, and the stakes then it turns up the suspense for a nice bite-sized bit of horror.

As Mary wakes, a nurse (Alicia Coppola) is there to comfort her. the nurse checks Mary over and begins questioning her. It becomes apparent to the nurse that the only thing that Mary can do to communicate is to Blink. Through a series of yes or no questions, we gradually learn how Mary ended up in the hospital, paralyzed. She was pushed from a high ledge, but by what? As the nurse continues to ask questions Mary keeps her eyes on something across the room that is hiding in the dark. It’s there, waiting for the right moment to strike again.

I think that what I enjoyed most about writer-director Spenser Cohen‘s short is how efficient it was in creating a tense scene. You have the helpless victim who can not do a thing to help, and the nurse who is clueless to the danger. What’s more, we have a threat that is pretty menacing. We don’t know the WHY here, but it’s not entirely necessary with a short.

What we need to know is that Cohen, and co-writer Anna Halberg can deliver a scare. They can. Then we need to know if they can pull it off. Again, they do it well. Assembling a capable group of artists both in front of and behind the camera we get a short that is impressively polished and frightening. Can someone just give them the rest of the money to finish the feature version now? I really want to see where this proof of concept goes.

8 Out of 10