I Heard It Too

A decent horror, using deep fears of the viewer. A little girl, her mother, a voice and the thrill. And the broken taboo. The result is far to be bad but you feel in strong way than it could be better.

Another horror movie in a house with a little girl being terrified. At times I feel that threat and violence are too much a part of our world. I am OK with films doing whatever they want, but I don't like little children traumatized. This is a bit over the top. There is no rhyme or reason for the events here. I don't suppose there need to be but it seems gratuitous.

I liked this short movie a lot. I think that the actress who plays the daughter is wonderful in this movie. A lot of times, the child actor struggles in a horror movie. This actress does a great job with some frightening material.

The direction and scenes are great. They set a spooky, dark environment. The story isn't really developed in such a short movie, but it works for the sense of peril the mom and daughter are in.

This film is based on a two sentence premise, which is; A girl heard her mom yell her name from downstairs, so she got up and started to head down. As she got to the stairs, her mom pulled her into her room and said "I heard that, too." It's used to very creepy effect here, as it's clearly an apparition, yet does such a convincing impression of her mother that she could be mistaken for her mother, except there's a subtle impression of threat in her voice that's delivered as though in innocence.

The storytelling though is muddled and incoherent, with the girl going out on the banister to investigate her mother's calling her, before we see the phantom spectre come out in the background and pull the girl back into her room, accompanied by a cheap jump scare. The next shot, we see her in her room with her mother, which lets us know that it wasn't a ghostly apparition, but in fact her mother pulling her back into her room, despite that being contradicted by the previous scene. This kind of nonsensical storytelling continues as we get further into the film, with scene transitions that aren't properly accounted for and leave you feeling confused, but not in a way that feels deliberate or craftily executed, but clumsy and rushed.

Seeing the monster depicted is never going to be as terrifying as what our imagination conjure up based on hints of the monsters presence, but this film does a reasonably satisfying job with the big reveal given that, and ends in suitably macabre and unsettling fashion, brutally stripping away our notion of childhood security.

Very reminiscent to the likes of 'Mama' and 'The Sixth Sense', a young mother tucks her daughter into bed where she soon starts hearing her mum's voice in the middle of night. The question is, is it really her lullaby-butchering mother or a ghostly imposter? Writer and director Sears is able to maintain a level of suspense that is often absent within short films. For its eight minute runtime, approximately half of that will have the innocent daughter roaming around the house in the dark, listening out for the familiar voice that commands her to "come downstairs". And I shan't lie, it did make me jump. Wasn't expecting it, so therefore I applaud Sears for producing an unpredictable jump scare that put me on edge. With a short film, time cannot be wasted. Unfortunately the other remaining four minutes consists of sweet endearing mummy slaying a rendition of "Hush Little Baby" (truly making it her own), telling her child to "wait, the voice will go soon" and gripping scissors very tightly and violently (which we all know is a health and safety hazard...). Honestly Meddeman's acting is something else, I'm talking 'The Room' quality. When the child actor is better, something is clearly wrong. Sears then attempts to experiment with his camerawork by using several Dutch angles, consistently shifting camera focus and over-utilising shakiness. It comes across as amateurish, which could've been omitted if Sears kept it simple. Oh, and the ending felt cheap. Really cheap. However for a debut short, it's effective. Replace the most useless mother in the world and strip back the amateur filming techniques, and Sears would've had a decent outing into the horror genre. Check it out nonetheless.