Jamie’s mysterious companion first appears as an old man with a cane, dressed in a hospital gown. The hospital gown makes him seem like a fellow “patient,” although since Jamie’s surroundings look more like a defunct mental hospital straight out of Twelve Monkeys, the audience does start off thinking that nothing is going to be quite as it seems. The old man later re-appears wearing a doctor’s lab coat to become Jamie’s torturer, along with a young female nurse.
The nurse first appears when the old man drugs Jamie. She seems to come out of nowhere, as one gets the impression that both Jamie and the old man are stuck in the room together. The nurse holds Jamie down while the old man sticks a syringe of something into his IV bag and knocks him unconscious. As the nurse appears so suddenly, and leans over to grab both of Jamie’s arms, as first I thought it was some random woman putting her body in between Jamie and the old man to protect him, so it threw me a bit when it turned out that she was part of the attack on him. (Of course, not to be sexist, but if he was supposed to be held down, it would probably take more than one woman – even in his weakened state. )
There were a lot of little vignettes throughout the film of a woman and a young child, which hint at memories inside Jamie’s mind that are trying to make themselves known. With all these obscure moments, at first I thought that this short film was just a piece of a larger story as nothing seemed to make sense.
At the end of the film comes the final twist – Jamie wakes up in a real hospital to see his wife at his side. He and their young daughter had been in some sort of accident; Jamie had been in a coma, but their daughter did not survive. My one complaint with this was that Jamie was not hooked up to any sort of medical equipment – he might at least have had some sort of breathing device. As he has dialogue in this scene, there’s the possibility of using a tracheotomy (an idea that was used to good effect in another low-budget film, Goodbye Lenin, where the mother had been hooked up to but could still deliver raspy lines).
In the scene in which Jamie is strapped down and tortured, I was very happy to see that the filmmaker relied on the power of suggestion and not just on gore! Jamie is strapped to a table, the nurse holds his eyes open and the old man moves in with a scalpel. Then there is a cut to an extreme close-up shot of Jamie’s open mouth screaming, and deep red blood running down his face. The next shot of Jamie shows him with bloody bandages over his eyes, so we never see exactly what the old man did to him, but having to fill in the blanks in one’s own mind is infinitely creepier than having to watch it play out on screen! In my opinion, this is always a good choice!
This movie has a very film noir style – a lot of dimly-lit rooms and harsh shadows. Most of the lighting is done really well, though I did notice a few under lit shots – when Jamie first wakes up, his face is a bit too harshly lit on one side. Also, when the young girl puts her hands on Jamie’s bandaged eyes, she is too dimly lit and not in keeping with the film noir style of the rest of the movie.
Nearly every scene in this film has some sort of color tint to it, and I couldn’t figure out whether that was done on purpose or accidentally. Jamie’s hospital room at first has a bluish tint to it – which was great to add to the gloomy and eerie feel – but in later shots there was an added yellow hue – I was unsure if that was a mistake or not because it just didn’t look right. There was a later dreamlike sequence with Jamie and the young girl in a meadow, but it had a very bright orange and pink tint. Even for a dream sequence, it just didn’t look right – a more conventional effect would be a bit of a bleach bypass and some diffusion – it is rather clichéd, but it’s an effect that an audience would recognize. My assumption is that the filmmaker was trying to make a sharp contrast between the dark rooms that Jamie has been in and the brightness of nature – but considering the film noir look in the majority of the film, even a normally lit and properly white balanced scene in the outdoors would create plenty of contrast.
There was also a scene at the end with Jamie and his wife together on a beach. This scene had a very yellow tint, which looked more like an improper white balance and not an intentional choice.
This film opens with a close-up shot of a record, accompanied by a nice minor-key piano solo, complete with the scratchy sound effect of the record player. There’s then a nice slow segue way to a creepy squealing sound, at the climax of which, Jamie wakes up in pain. There’s not a whole lot of music in this film, but that piano melody pops up every once and a while, and it gives a really great spooky atmosphere.
The majority of the dialogue was clear and easy to understand, though at the very end when Jamie and his wife were talking their voices were quite low and I had to turn up the volume. It was a good moment, and I particularly loved the way that the actors talked so comfortably with each other. It was appropriate of them to speak in lower voices, but the levels were just a bit too low. (Common mixing for dialogue usually keeps it at about -12 dB, with unique sound FX coming in at -6 dB and music beds at -18 dB.)
The majority of this film’s $4,000 budget was spent on building the hospital set, and I have to say it was money well spent. (I was really quite shocked to learn that the set had been built, as the set looked just like one might imagine an old abandoned mental institution to be.) It’s very hard to find old locations that will allow filmmakers in to shoot, so often times one is forced to build a set. On the plus side, shooting in a film noir style is helpful if one needs to cut any corners – all the dark shadows will help to hide the set!
The rest of the budget was used to rent lighting equipment and a dolly. At first I thought that $4,000 was just a bit high for such a short film, but with these expenses it does make a lot of sense.
This movie is quite high on the creepy factor, and does a good job at being scary without being gory. However, there is an awful lot of confusing creepiness throughout the film that still isn’t quite wrapped up by the end. I can understand wanting to create the bizarre world of a coma, but it might be better to be more clear with the world of the coma – trying to make it into an actual place in which Jamie has somehow become sequestered, perhaps even going with the mental hospital theme in which he is tortured by an experimenting doctor and over medicated to stop him seeing the little girl. Something along those lines will give the audience even more of a shock when Jamie finally wakes up in the real world.
The theme of this movie is an interesting one, and it’s a very unique take on the idea of a coma. What really happens when one is asleep for so long? It could be something peaceful, but after such a violent event like the one that Jamie suffered, it makes sense that his coma would be equally violent and disturbing.
