Synopsis:
Plagued by his past and crippling drug addiction, a man struggles to recall an unbelievable set of events during a police interrogation.
The truth is out there….or is it even true? This is one of the many questions that the short film Apocryphal poses over the course of the 33 Minute running time, yet most questions posed are left to the viewer to answer.
Writer & Director Joshua Armstrong takes a very personal subject of drug addiction and focuses on the pain, suffering, and confusion that this lifestyle can cause. Armstrong does something interesting now and combines the very serious subject with sci-fi horror. Using genre as a vehicle to express very grounded things in fantastical ways is by no means new, but you can tell that Armstrong has a keen grasp of balancing theme and story.
In Apocryphal, we follow Oliver and his small group of friends, whom we quickly discover are all heroin addicts. The actors all do a fine job in the opening acting obnoxious, and I found myself instantly not liking them. I enjoyed this approach in the storytelling because as the film progresses, the true nature of Oliver and his friends is revealed. In one scene, Oliver is struggling through a job interview. The stakes are high, if he doesn’t land this job he’s going to lose his apartment. During the course of this scene, Armstrong peels back the layers of Oliver and we come to find out that he’s a brilliant scientist who manufactured drugs but has sadly succumbed to the temptation of his own creation. I soon found myself siding more with Oliver, wanting him to get out of the hell hole his life is. Very good story design there.
Speaking of structure, Armstrong also crafts the story smartly by intercutting between the job interview scene and police interrogation, allowing Oliver to tell his story with 2 wildly different tones. Yet the structure of the film is where I found it losing me a bit. It does have a bit of a pacing issue. I found myself finally getting sucked into the story around the 7-minute mark, once more was revealed about Oliver’s true past. As soon as the Alien storyline really comes into focus, I felt like there were too many other random horror elements thrown in to add mystery. Armstrong introduced a lot of scary ideas, maybe too many for this short of a film. I think the pacing would have been improved if the drive and focus were really focused on the mystery of the “incident”.
Armstrong does a great job ramping up the tension in the end when the “incident” takes place on screen. Michael Southgate who plays Oliver carried the film decently but was a bit overdramatic at moments. I felt Emily Tucker and Alex Arnold who played Oliver’s friends Renn & Charlie really stole the show towards the end of the film. I wished for more from the alien design, but I can understand on a limited budget, you make do with what you have.
The cinematography was impressive in Apocryphal. The daytime scenes felt dreamy, and the nighttime scenes were moody and nightmarish. The special effects in the climax of the film were quite impressive too, with the action and tension blending well, especially in the final act.
Joshua Armstrong’s Apocryphal is an impressive short film. It suffers slightly from trying to explore too many themes and questions, but overall the sci-fi metaphor it creates to discuss mental health and drug addiction is powerful and ultimately quite bleak.
Links: www.apocfilm.com
