The Black Hole

The Black Hole is a fun Looney Tunes-inspired cautionary tale about a lowly office worker discovering a portable portal. The concept of the portal is familiar but at a brisk three-minutes filmmakers, Philip Sansom and Olly Williams, keep it tight and engaging. You'll see the end way before the protagonist does but that is part of the appeal.

Fans should check out the short film, Room 8.

Today we have a shortfilm called "The Black Hole", released in 2008 but I descovered it only one month ago. Everything happens inside an office during the night. The directors and writers of the short (Phil Sansom and Olly Williams) chose Napolen Ryan as the only character of the film, and it's wonderful to see how his face expresses all his thoughts. At this sci-fi story a worker makes photocopies at the machine but suddenly something happens, something weird. At the begining only a dull thing but at the end it becomes amazing and exciting. As far as I'm concerned, it's a great exercise to make a shortfilm when you are a cinema student because you need to create a completely meaningful creation in only three or five minutes. "The Black Hole" is a film that everybody must watch because it is very short and really thrilling. You want to play it again and again and maybe you will feel a little bit scared at the end.

A special gift. to a bored clerk. the too many posibilities to use it. and, the error as result of deep sin. modern in every aspect, it reminds the old Arabian Nights. for the moral, for the character who is transformed, step by step, by his discover, for the end who reminds the limit of the bocke by reality. a film about greed, at the first sigh. in fact, only the subtle question "what you do if..." is the basic source of seduction and challenge for the viewer.

A man, using a copying machine, is presented with a large sheet of paper with a big, black spot on it. It turns out it is a transportable hole. One can place it on a wall and be able to reach through it. The potential is amazing, but we are greedy creatures, and sometimes we don't think before we act.

'The Black Hole (2008)' looks like a mid-2000s advertisement for a chocolate bar, the sort of thing in which an unhappy office worker is given a specific brand of chocolate and his world goes from black-and-white to technicolour, as it were. In fact, this would've been a perfect ad for 'Snickers' if it finished a little earlier and had a "get some nuts!" tag at the end. Aesthetic aside, this is a really concise and confident short film about a man who discovers that the office printer may in fact not be of this world when it prints a magic black hole capable of bypassing any surface it is pressed up against. The thing is an example of the perils of greed, with an appropriately dark ending and a (subtly) satirically comical tone. It's an entertaining and intriguing experience that makes the most of its premise and doesn't outstay its welcome. 7/10.