Manifold

It is not unusual to see short film made as calling cards and portfolios first and films second; one always hopes that they can be both and the better ones can, but sometimes you do watch these things and feel like the casual audience was down the list of targets, behind agents, producers etc. Manifold is not quite that basic but it does feel a little like this as it wants to show us atmosphere, tone and CGI. The plot sees a small town sheriff standing over a bizarre multiple murder scene in a barn, while far from there a software engineer tries to meet up with a brother he didn't know he had until he found him using a sophisticated version of Google Images search.

The multiple hood figures and the software plot device probably tell you where we are going with this one but we go that way anyway, with sombre music, black and white visuals and a sense of something bigger over our heads. As a plot it doesn't really work because it manages to be a bit too obvious and a bit too underdeveloped at the same time. You are ahead of it on the basic content but the film is mils ahead of you on the bigger picture – one it never lets us in on either. As a concept it is not quite sci-fi 101 but you'll know it and it will feel familiar as you watch.

As a calling card it is pretty decent. The visuals could have done with a bit more richness in them because it feels like the black & white film was supposed to do all the work itself, rather than being a contributing part of the tone which I guess was the intention. The performances are OK and the brief CGI shots are solid enough. I would have liked more of a payoff though and a bit more atmosphere in the delivery, but this film isn't really about me, it is about Burns and as such it shows him in a pretty decent light.

How so many shorts manage to be boring is a mystery. Manifold is no exception. It's well filmed, but has a weak photography and lighting for its black and white scheme. The music is extremely annoying, reminiscent of those early crappy computer scores, back in the 80s.

The worst is the storytelling. Scenes appear to be chronological, but disconnected from the previous ones by gaps so large that the sum feels more like a trailer. There's your average conspiracy going on, one of the most snore-inducing themes of the last decades, yet no effort is made to present us with the who and the why. Meanwhile most scenes are, by themselves, not remotely interesting or involving. Double fail.

It feels like the sole object of this enterprise is to "grace" us with yet another CGI sequence that we don't care about, and with the mediocre talent of a geeky musical composer.

It's only a few minutes long, but there are many better ways to waste them, so you can skip Manifold.