Creating a world in any form of fictional media today is a struggle for so many reasons, most of which are simply because everything has been done. By the time most people have hit adulthood, they have ingested so much media that anything new is bound to be compared to something that came before it. Every so often creators, as is the case with filmmakers like Wes Craven or Guillermo del Toro, bring a new perspective to our reality or a new reality altogether. The Crossing is a short that expands our world to include a terrifying tribal doll monster that hungers.

Victoria was left in the care of the church after her mother went missing when she was just a child. With her faith and her smarts to guide her, she has found her mother’s last known location an old mansion in the countryside. Living there is a menacing looking woman as well as an elderly lady who allow Victoria, under the guise of being a maid, to enter the home. As she is searching through the house in the night, she soon finds there is something truly sinister going on within the house’s secretive walls.

Begining on a mysteriously creepy note, The Crossing gains all of its strength through building a dark religion and monster in the course of its short 7 minutes. With all the monsters of the genre, it was great to see one look so unique and have such a strong presence. Add in some surreal powers, and fantastically shot sequences and the monster becomes a malevolent force to be reckoned with. Where the film is flawed is in its clunky, and at times poorly acted, dialogue, but this is hardly a problem when the total dialogue is less than 50 words. The director Kheireddine El-Helou has outdone himself and I would love to see a feature film of this monster that has all the imaginative moments and intensity of this short.

8 out of 10