A Social Call

A man finishes his breakfast and heads out of town, gradually seeing busy roads become deserted and overgrown country lanes. It is on one of these roads that he abandons his car, heads across a field, knocks the door of an isolated house and then shoots the inhabitant dead. He pauses to make a cup of tea but then heads off on his way home – only to realise that he has forgotten something.

With no dialogue to speak of this one-joke short film needed to be very funny. Setting out its stall in the cinematically familiar world of the contracted killer, Romney aims for a dark comic tone to his short and achieves it well. However the one thing he doesn't get right is the joke and, since there only is one, that is a pretty important thing to get right. Sadly this one is too obvious and, although darkly cruel it is just not smart enough or funny enough to carry it for even seven minutes. It wouldn't have cost it much to make it a little bit more but by settling for such a basic approach Romney lives and dies on this and unfortunately he dies with it.

Overall this is an OK little short but there is not a great deal to it and the punchline is not that funny – which only damages the telling looking back. Watching it the first time I wasn't to know this and did find it rather engaging but the predictable and unfunny conclusion took away more than it had given me.