On occasion, InReview is sent screeners for independent films, both short and full length, and the latest film to hit our inbox is Vincenzo Nappi’s “Filtered,” a 5-minute short film very much in the same vein as 2014’s “Unfriended,” focusing on weaving horror elements with our familiarity of technology.
There isn’t much of a plot to the film, as the entirety of it comprises of friends Jasmine (Jasmine Winter) and Marco (Marco Carreiro) video calling each other, when horror things happens, presumably because of some sort of entity that gets them. While the special effects are nothing special, and its scares are basically jump scares, I think there is potential in this project, and I think the filmmakers should use this film as a proof of concept, and develop it into something longer. I think that there’s a particularly potent market for this type of during the pandemic, when we’ve necessarily have had to rely on technology more than ever.
Winter and Carreiro do fine, but it’s hard to judge a performance with only five minutes of material. But I suspect they would do fine in a longer version of this film.
The film is competently made enough, I just wish that there was more of it. As it stands, it’s hard to see this as any more than a demo or proof of concept for a much longer work.
Nappi is currently a film studies student at Concordia University, and while I don’t usually assess amateur works, I think that there could be something here if he explores this concept further and applies it to a much longer horror plot.
