‘What's Kept Inside’ Short Film Review: Emotional Storytelling and Cinematic Realism [SFF 25]
As much as film invites all forms of criticism or speculation, anyone who says the horror genre is dead is under the same delusions many characters in some of the best horror films fall victim to. A common aspect of the horror genre is the idea that many characters, when faced with the very terror they’ve either denied themselves or the kind invoked from confronting something that they truly don’t understand, is the notion that everything will be okay. But we’ve all seen plenty of horror films throughout cinematic history to now that never happens, so much so that it might as well be a running gag rather than a foreshadowing to the climactic insane moment that gives all the horror classic their long lasting appeal.
At first, the short film ‘What’s Kept Inside’ presents that notion through the subtlety tranquil performance that Chara Avilés gives as Karla, a girl who struggles with the weight of caring for her sick father and her neurodivergent younger brother, all the while keeping their home afloat, which proves to be a daunting task as the film progresses, and Karla’s sanity is tested beyond the limits of which any fifteen year old girl should be asked to do.
What’s Kept Inside succeeds not only in invoking a feeling of dread where the patient narrative approach it takes gives the viewer the feeling that it is truly building to something of the most horrific proportions. But it also utilizes its exquisitely dark cinematography and eery music to make the psychology of Karla something to marvel as the limits of her patience in watching over a father bordering on cannibalistic insanity and having her brother suffer an intolerable level of bullying, reach the kind of breaking point that makes the notion that everything will be okay something only the most pessimistic of viewers can laugh at, even with an ending as bleak and as poetically nihilistic as the one director Chava Méndez has captured in this horror short, which although is his directorial debut, is no doubt the beginning of a great career, hopefully in more than just the horror genre as he has crafted a great film rife with emotional storytelling, cinematic realism, and a strong visual language style that few filmmakers can truly bring to the forefront of aesthetic beauty.