Director Danny Murphy‘s Don’t Look is a great midnight short film. It has a clever premise, gruesome deaths, and a hair-raising entity. This is the type of short that warrants a feature-length film. Most likely, it would garner an audience, especially among teens.
A group of friends, Abbie (Morgan Colquhoun), Rowan (Valor Grey), Harris (Danny Murphy), and Thomas (Olly Rhodes), do a very teenager thing and break into a creepy old house. The setting, complete with dusty furniture and old timey furnishings, sets just the right tone. Not long after exploring the house, the friend group meets a mysterious man, played by Liam Robertson. He claims that the house is his, and instead of just letting the teens apologize and leave, he essentially forces them to play a game called Don’t Look. The rules are simple. The man summons an entity. After three knocks, they have to close their eyes until dawn. If they don’t, the entity will kill them.
Though on the surface the film’s main concept and the game may seem simple, it’s executed quite well. We only see glimpses of the entity, but it teases and taunts the friend group via whispers and other methods to get them to open their eyes. We see the friends grip each other’s hands and plead with each other not to open their eyes. Though all of them were initially skeptical, they become true believers not long after the game starts.
For a short film, there’s a lot of gore in this one and some truly memorable and gnarly deaths. Kudos to the special effects team for making each and every death really stand out. Once the game starts, there’s an immediate sense that no one is safe, and the performances go a long way in establishing the tension. Again, this is a well-executed film that also deals with how much these friends trust each other.
Don’t Look is an effective and nerve-jangling short. The film proves that Murphy has talent as a director. I’d love to see this game play out more in a feature-length film.
