Charlie (Chance Gibbs) decides to walk into a pub at 3am after failing to finish a job. He sits at the bar, orders a bottle, and calls a partner to help him fix his mess. Frank (Tom Young) arrives quickly but instead he questions Charlie’s decisions and sinks him morally without any helpful solutions. As Frank keeps talking, Charlie starts to remember some things from his past and the decisions that brought him to that same spot where he is seated while pouring shot after shot. These memories are not pretty but will make him understand the serious predicament he’s in.

A Serious Predicament, as the title suggests, has its main character in a tight dead-end situation. From start to finish, it denotes that there is a mystery to be solved but when the problem is finally revealed everything takes a turn to another mysterious predicament that will leave the viewer intrigued and hoping everything is solved before the credits roll.

You can feel the suspense being maintained for the whole sequence and it is mostly due to its atmosphere and background music that keeps a dark air from beginning to end—it’ll make you feel as if anything will pop out eventually and scare your brains out. It never gives away the secrets and mysteries that the two characters hold during their short conversation. It is a shock to finally discover what they were talking about in mid-conversation. It is a bigger step given  from the director’s previous short (The Doll)—you can see that his suspense techniques are kept in this new short but all jokes and mocks are put on hold to give his new work a more serious tone.

A Serious Predicament will also leave you in a serious predicament as it puzzles you and gives you a chance to form your own conclusion but, just like Charlie, you will end up questioning whether what you see is actually what you get.

9 OUT OF 10 SHOTS