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Stars: Barron Leung, Kiyoshi Shishido, Matthew Mitchell Espinosa, Thaddeus Newman, Andrew Hayden Kang | Written by Jasper Chen | Directed by Taka Tsubota

Forced to stay inside a cabin, Alan (Barron Leung) finds himself victimised by the other boys also there. Despite the horrific atmosphere within, there appears to be no other option when an apocalyptic landscape of monsters lies outside the door. It leaves Alan to question which monsters he would rather face.

A flashback shows how instantly the bullying begins before Alan is defended by his cousin, George (Kiyoshi Shishido), although that help is notably missing from the present-day scenes. As the cousin ventured outside in search of help, Alan is left with visible wounds on him. Despite trying to hold onto his humanity, he is outnumbered by others who have embraced barbarity.

Director Taka Tsubota uses the 18-minute runtime to capture the cabin’s suffocating nature, courtesy of the...

Taka Tsubota is a Los Angeles-based film director/writer/editor and a former staff writer at Walt Disney Imagineering. Born and raised in Niigata, Japan, he moved to the United States in high school and graduated from the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts in 2018 with a B.A. in Cinema and Media Studies. Taka has worked as a virtual reality designer at a Tokyo-based computer graphics company for 2 years, creating VR projects for Square Enix and H.I.S. while writing and directing his debut film, “Stolen”. Taka is also a professional Japanese writer/translator/cultural consultant currently working on 2 unannounced Amazon Prime Original projects as a staff writer. His latest short, “Canary” is a post-apocalyptic thriller.

“Canary” review is part of the Submit Your Film Initiative

The story revolves around five youths, who, as we learn from flashbacks, drove to a cabin owned by George's father, in order to spend their vacation there.