To the surprise of, I suspect, absolutely no one who’s been following my writing for a minute, October is my month. Sadly not my month of birth, but it’s my zone, my vibe — you get the idea.

All this to say it’s a great excuse to chase up new horror content, or horror content I’ve been meaning to watch for a while and have procrastinated on. One of my favorite ways to do this right now — with my energy levels being hit and miss when it comes to committing to full-length movies — is short films. Let me tell you, Clifford Miu’s Bargain definitely didn’t disappoint.

Free on YouTube through Alter’s ever-wonderful and constantly expanding collection; it also has a crisp eight-minute runtime, and makes expert use of its small, intimate window. A great deal of what makes this short film work so well is Yi Liu, the lead actor. Her facial acting carries an impressive amount of nuance and weight even in the several segments of the film that have little to no dialogue.

Equally, the set building is both simple and powerful. Working from the closed room set of a single apartment, the film does an excellent job of expressing the protagonist’s personality, interests, and relationships. Together with the acting, it readily pulls us into the film’s world and gets us to care about the protagonist without wasting any of a limited run on clunky exposition.

With an original score by Erik DeLong, and a competent sound team — Mihir Chitale and Lillian Yuan — Bargain has a clear understanding of how to use music, sound, and silence to create and ramp up tension. This is something that can similarly be difficult to pull off with such a narrow window of time to work from.

With short films like this (as much as possible) I like to encourage people to go in blind, so I won’t be leaving any spoilers this time around. That being said, if you’ve ever sat back from a horror movie and wondered why and how the protagonists could be so foolhardy; Bargain might just scratch your itch. It certainly did mine.

If there’s a single “complaint” I have, it’s only how little we know about the secondary character in the film, when the personality of the protagonist is so skillfully expressed through visual and set cues. Still, I put “complaint” in air quotes for a reason. Staying too long with this deuteragonist would have led the film’s length to drag and undermined the things that make it so effective as it is. Alternately, it would have stripped away some of the ingredients already existing that are really great, and I wouldn’t want to lose those.

Ultimately, Bargain is efficient and highly well-made, with plenty to satisfy long-term horror fans and a welcome inclusion of new approaches to shake up a familiar story. It’s both entirely satisfying as a short film, and understands how to maintain interest in its story that you’re left wanting more.

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Bargain

10

Score

10.0/10

Pros

• Deeply talented acting
• Evocative score
• Great setbuilding

Cons

• Full-length followup when?