A young boy searches for answers after his dad goes missing at sea, but after discovering a strange fossil on a Yorkshire beach, he thinks it could be the missing piece of the puzzle.
Vestige, the upcoming short film Directed by Joseph Simmons and written by Joseph Simmons and Guðni Líndal Benediktsson, will have its premiere at Frightfest London on the 28th of August. It was produced by Lewis Coates and stars the talents of Ben Hackett, Steve Evets, and Corin Silva.
The film is an exploration of obsession due to loneliness and fixation. We follow Lucas (Hackett) as he attempts to unravel—quite literally—the disappearance of his father; a case that others feel is solved and shelved.
Lucas listens to his father’s tapes on an old Walkman while strolling the beachfront, following old but sage advice on how to look for fossils and the like. Stumbling across something strange, he returns home to study his peculiar find.
The object seems to guide Lucas, turning his longing and held-out hope into a fiendish fixation when he believes he has stumbled upon a secret—one left behind by his long lost old man.
Is there really something out there trying to help him? Something trying to lead him to his father? Did his father leave behind a hidden trail for his son to solve? Or is Lucas simply lost somewhere within a downward spiral of grief and disbelief?
Rather than answer that for you, I really suggest that you give this short a watch. It is very rare that a small-budget short film delivers such a powerful and poignant punch at the end.
Simmons had this to say when discussing his thoughts and inspirations for the film:
As a philosophy graduate, obsession is a theme that has always fascinated me; characters that are lost or lack hope at the start of the film and become absorbed in their quest for truth or meaning to life. Donnie in Donnie Darko and Maud in Saint Maud are great examples of this and both films use genre elements of horror, fantasy or science fiction to explore how they see the world. Lucas, our protagonist, becomes obsessively driven to know the truth about his father’s disappearance, and now with the discovery of a mysterious fossil in a sea cave, he believes he’s found a way of finding out what really happened.
Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’ has always been a favourite of mine, it’s both eerie and visually stunning, but it is the way that it presents the discovery of the creature that keeps me coming back. The intrigue and wonder the characters have, even if they suspect it could be dangerous, they can’t help themselves. We learn as the characters do about the truth of their terrifying revelation and we can’t look away!
I wanted to make a film about the discovery of something otherworldly too, but I wanted the story to be based in the world we know. So, I started to think about a story surrounding an alien hiding in plain sight for a long time, on Earth, waiting to be discovered. What might it want? What could it do? And how could it attach itself to Lucas in a way that we can emotionally explore his story?”
Thanks for reading and as always, stay sordid. The trailer and poster are below.
