Foxes

'Foxes (2011)' is most successful when it comes to its atmosphere. The short drama-horror focuses on a woman who seems to be drawn to the foxes that hunt through her bins at night, to the increasing detriment of her already unsatisfying home life. It's a well-shot and well-edited affair with a professional aesthetic and, as I mentioned, a strong sense of atmosphere. Its narrative is a bit basic, though, and its payoff isn't as strong as it perhaps needed to be. Plus, its ambiguity feels less like a purposeful decision and more like the result of an uninspired scripting session. Nevertheless, this is a solidly entertaining short film. It's good, just not great. 6/10.

Where and how I have lived for the past decade has been mostly the influence of my partner but in this way it has been a positive thing as she generally hates places without character such as new builds and estates like this. I mention this because having been on some of them in the past I can relate to the reality of being somewhere so empty, where the inside of your house is pretty much the place to be. That is the setting for this short film but more extreme since the couple are not only on such an estate, but it is also one that was built on a hope that never came, so buyers never came and the housing market collapsed so now the couple find themselves the only people on their estate but with no chance to sell their property, recover their money or get other options.

The trapped hopelessness of this will speak to those of us in the middle classes, since property and negative equity seems to speak to aspirations, risk and fear. Here we have a woman cut off from so much that when she makes even a fleeting connection to a group of urban foxes, she is energized by it to the point of frenzy. Although the narrative takes a horror route, it never loses touch with the base meaning and it is this double thread that makes the film work well. The oppressive shrieking adds a (literal) voice to the feeling of being trapped and, although it does eventually take a leap into far fantasy, it continues to work.

Finnegan's direction makes the most of the emptiness of the estate and the lives, with a very drab and hollow sense to the view. Ruane leads the small cast well, managing to convince in her character whether she is numbed, excited or lost – it is a tough performance to sell but she manages it. Generally Foxes works well as the base subject matter is familiar and the development into more horror territory doesn't lose touch with that base.

There is an awful lot going on in these 16 minutes. The cinematography is excellent, the acting solid, and the Gothic quality . . . well done. The film is jam-packed with very telling details . . . the husband's badge pinned to his dull workday uniform, the foxes at the garbage, the marks on the woman's body, the bits of landscape framing the row houses. The housing community is beyond monotonous--it's downright menacing in its straight-jacket sameness. There's an intensity that compels you to keep watching. The ending is a bit hokey for me, but the options were probably limited given the direction of the story. Certainly worth watching.

It was thanks to the Big Sur short film festival that I had the chance to see it. A lonely couple appears to be the only inhabitant of a vast new subdivision. The silence is deafening. Humans were not meant to live this way. Psychological malnourishment is their lot, thanks in part to overzealous builders in cahoots with myopic financiers.

There is no overt commentary on that political slant. But one can easily draw the conclusion. One drawback is a slightly too graphic depiction of amorous activity. I wonder why movies drifted away from off-camera suggestions, towards overt imagery. It seemed so much more tasteful in the classics.

Director Lorcan Finngan delivers a somber tale of isolation set in an abandoned suburban community. The young couple, Maria Ruane and Tom Vaughan-Lawlor, are growing further apart as they try to stay financially afloat.

The setting and cinematography are fabulous, pulling you into suburbia and trapping you inside. The score is the main drive of this short and plays as its best character. The dialogue is minimal, leaving the viewer to fill in the blanks. This is far from perfect, but a fun little ride.

This connected with me a lot better than Vivarium, which was remade from this short. At a 16 minute runtime, there is no reason not to gives this little gem a watch.