Synopsis:
Lilian Romero’s workday has been a long one, she has been working overtime to save for a trip, but her boss asks her to make one final stop. Her final stop is a unique and eerie house. Inside she meets Jaime and Sarah Campbell who are having an issue with their home assistant device, L.U.N.A. Only this visit is not like the rest as the device beckons her deeper into the house to reveal the home’s true secret.
Directed By Blake Vaz, written by Roman Arabia and starring the talents of Fernanda Romero (Lilian), Lauren Blair (Jamie), and Lauren Desahne (Sarah), L.U.N.A is a short horror/thriller that is apparently looking at becoming a feature film in the not too distant future. It is an English and Spanish language film and has had a much bigger budget than your traditional indie shorts, bringing in a good collection of talented cinematographers, producers, actors, and the like. It has been doing very well during its festival runs, so we thought that we should throw in our two cents as we were lucky enough to be offered a screener for that exact purpose. So, without further ado…
The first thing to accost the senses is a pretty intense score. It’s loud, full of bass and techno beats intertwined with 80 synthpop—very Perturbator. These sounds ebb and flow as the film’s intensity rises and falls; the tension is pretty constant but mixes well with mood and lighting. The film tries to use complementary colours of blue and orange though it tends to come off as a darker red, perhaps to denote danger within the darkness of the house. While stark, the colourization is far from distracting and actually rather pleasing to the eye. The acting was superb and the characters perfectly believable, though a ten-minute runtime does not give much room for growth or for the actresses to really delve deep into a persona. Still, I was pleasantly surprised by the ease with which all the characters interacted rather effortlessly.
The plot is simple and modern; a haunted Alexa or Google Home device (L.U.N.A) that is being used by some ancient entity to have the trio release it from its prison within the walls of the house. The film starts with a strong pace, wasting no time to introduce the characters, setting, plot, etc. but it does not take a minute to let the audience digest much of what is going on. I was honestly expecting the film to—obviously—build progressively towards its creepy climax, which it does, but it really feels a little premature once we collectively reach the climax. Yes, it was good, but it was over just a little too quickly.
Perhaps the point was to keep the film to a strict ten-minute runtime, but I really feel like a couple more minutes would have made the film just that much more intriguing…a little foreplay goes a long way. I can see why the film is going well and reaping up laurels at its festival runs—it’s a good watch, but one that could perhaps benefit from a slower pace and a better build-up. Thanks for reading and as always, stay sordid. Trailer and artwork below.
External Links:
http://valagardoproductions.com/
