The Minions (Short)
Jeremiah Kipp is a filmmaker that goes for mood over narrative logic. That sounds like a dig at him, but it’s just an observation, and one that is a big part of why the three short films I’ve seen from him, including this one, are memorable. The other short he asked me to review when he asked me to do this one was based on a short story by Poe, and while this one is an original work (from a screenplay by Joseph Fiorillo), it maintains the same sense of existential dread found in Poe’s stories, and the results are hypnotic.
The film tells the story of William, who recounts an evening on the streets to Abigail where he is walking home, and he stumbles across two drunk girls. He thinks they are drunk, anyway; he has just gone through an area known as the Witch’s Path. He goes home with them, and starts making out with one of them. Abigail is curious if he was thinking of her. What part does she have with this night?
Kipp’s film is an exercise is tension and atmosphere more than anything else, and it succeeds in that quite well. The film doesn’t quite hit the mark as much as his Poe adaptation, “Berenice,” did, but when you’re dealing with a legendary story and author, anything else may very well fall short. That being said, though, Kipp has a keen eye for visuals that aids in building suspense in even the simplest story. Not a lot of filmmakers can pull that off; he makes it look easy.
The Minions (2014) from Jeremiah Kipp on Vimeo.
