“Heartless,” a new short film from writer/director Kevin Sluder, incidentally has a lot of heart. And blood. And gore. And… a literal heart.

Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s classic short story “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “Heartless” instead presents us with Shelby (Stacy Snyder): an attractive, well-groomed associate at a company where she is frequently overlooked by her male counterparts. As she struggles to complete a corporate presentation to coworkers that are too caught up in their egos to even bother listening, a horrific secret begins to gnaw at her conscience, driving her to the brink of insanity before fully accepting her truly twisted tendencies.

It’s a clever, modern-day adaptation of a classic story with a strong female lead and a punk rock attitude. The way Shelby’s male coworkers interact with her and treat her plays into her character development in a different way than in Poe’s original story; this time, it’s a rare female perspective that’s also psychotic and deranged.

The film opens with a clean, fresh, minimalist background and a sharply dressed Shelby, juxtaposed by the harsh screams and thrashing guitar of a fastcore Dillinger Escape Plan song, keeping in the spirit of Michael Haneke’s terrifying Funny Games, where two handsome, well-groomed young men reveal their sociopathic tendencies. The constant inner turmoil going back and forth between her conscience and her violent side is brilliantly cross-cut in the editing, making us one with her insanity.

“Heartless” as a whole is tight, coherent, and of solid production quality that is both socially relevant and aesthetically pleasing. And really, really fun.