House

Directed by Arun Kapur

2022

A new eclectic micro short comes courtesy of West Midlands filmmaker Arun Kapur.

A very brief horror piece about a man who battles the effects of the pandemic and lockdown, the director uses flashes of darkness to explore isolation and neuroses.

Shot in Wolverhampton during lockdown itself, House sees the filmmaker edit a strange collage of images with an added trance-like voiceover. The film mixes a vague narrative with more dreamy (or nightmare-ish) fantasies which could be in the mind of the protagonist or the result of the seclusion caused by a lonely house.

I suppose the most apt way of describing House is experimental, which I have to be honest isn’t really my thing sadly.

Shot in black and white, the monochrome choice adds a bit of weird moodiness but also darkens the images so much that there’s really not a lot to see at times. Some shots just appear to be black. Whether by choice or by accident, you may struggle to literally view moments unfold.

Filmmakers keeping busy in lockdown and using a creative drive to hone and experiment with technique is more than honourable, but some pieces of work are exactly that. A test for bigger things.

Here, a man stuck in the house is interspersed with some eerie low-mixed voices but, and it’s just personal taste, a bit more structure could have gone a long way. Such as it is, it asks that its meaning be derived by an audience but it felt muddled.

It's like a kind of free-form slice of filmmaking. Ideas may spontaneously appear like Paul McCartney jamming random notes on his guitar before he discovers hit songs as seen in the Get Back documentary.

But like that process, eventually the initial rough version is worked on, and a creator has to choose the best bits, shape its form and ensure the final quality is the best they can make it. 

In the end, its art-house sensibilities mix with what seems like a prototype form, meaning that House feels like a first draft mix of chaotic film ideas that don’t come together and needs another pass.

Michael Sales