Going to the doctor’s office or the hospital is nerve-racking enough. Imagine getting stuck inside of an MRI machine. That’s essentially the premise of the short film MRI, starring Eva Hamilton. Yet, as each minute of the short ticks by, it transforms into a creative creature feature.
Not much is known about Hamilton’s character. Since the short clocks in at about six minutes, it gets down to business pretty quickly. Within the first minute, her character gets trapped inside of an MRI machine. No doctor can save her, though she can hear them talking, and none of them have a solution to free her. As she listens to them chatting and as her sense of entrapment deepens, panic ensues.
Hamilton is pretty much the only one that we see on screen, and thankfully, she really carries this short. She conveys her character’s sense of dread and full-blown anxiety, especially the longer that she’s trapped. By about the halfway point, the short takes a left turn, as she hears growls and snarls of an unknown creature that apparently invaded the hospital. Sometimes, it’s effective to show less, and that’s the case here. While we hear the creature, we only see Hamilton’s character and her increasing awareness that she’s likely in deep, deep trouble.
As is, this short is pretty self-contained. It has a clear beginning, middle, and end. The twist works. We also know the likely outcome, even if we don’t necessarily see it. Still, if this is ever turned into a feature-length film, I’d enjoy watching it. Hamilton, meanwhile, has increasingly appeared in horror movies, including Mutilator 2 and Hellhounds most recently. She’s an underrated scream queen, and I hope we continue to see her in genre movies.
Overall, MRI makes the very idea of hospital visit even more terrifying. The short contains a clever concept that soon morphs into an unexpected creature feature. All of this makes for a nail-biting six minutes.
