Take the Left Hand Path is a ghostly tale of two women who stumble upon their long-dead friend after trekking through the woods in the dead of night to get to a party. It was written by Naomi Bowman and Hal Sinden. It was directed by Hal Sinden.

The acting is good. The characters are ok given the six-minute runtime. It’s the relationship between the characters that makes everything work, and the three major characters all come off as genuine friends. It’s exactly how one would hope meeting the spirit of an old friend would be. The dialogue is decent and most successful in expressing how comfortable these three characters are with one another.

Take the Left Hand Path is labeled as a comedy. Although it didn’t make me laugh, I did appreciate the charisma and whimsy that was present. What I am most impressed by is how intelligently executed the short was. It’s a great example of how to create something with almost nothing. It’s clever about its use of audio, adding another layer to the supernatural without it ever being overbearing. They were smart about what they chose to show. They used darkness very well. They used Halloween well. When something is Halloween-themed, it kind of warps expectations towards something more fun and less demanding, and Take the Left Hand Path certainly uses that to its advantage. The tale here is a legitimate ghost story. If I were to explain the plot from start to finish it would hit all the necessary beats of a good ghost story.

Take the Left Hand Path is a solid short. It’s not amazing, but you might appreciate how they accomplish so much with so little. It may seem a bit late for a Halloween story, but I’d argue it isn’t late for a ghost story. Ghost stories have a history with Christmas that began long before A Christmas Carol. If you want to celebrate Christmas the old-fashioned way, maybe take it upon yourself to set aside six minutes for a nifty exploration of the afterlife.