Sometimes even in a good indie flick, it’s easy for a filmmaker to lose focus or for the film to drag. That’s the best thing about the micro-shorts that are often put out by filmmakers between films. A Twisted Fate is the latest from Brandon Prewitt of Studio 605, the company behind The Campground and the upcoming The Wicked One.
The film is only ten minutes long, but uses every second perfectly. After coincidentally each receiving a panicked phone call from a family member about an emergency, a man and a woman are rushing to leave their office building when the elevator they are in shuts down. Left without cell service and with no hope of getting out, we are given their full stories, and wondering where the story will go.
I don’t think it’s much of a shock to say the film has a nifty twist – as soon as it began I realized there was one coming, but I was very surprised to find that it was not the one I had guessed. For that, I give the story an A+ off the bat, because even some of the masters of suspense and twists like Hitchcock are easy to piece together within minutes of a film starting.
There are limited actors in the film, of course, and it’s more of a character thriller than a horror, but that doesn’t mean the concept isn’t horrific. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I actually wanted to see where the story and characters were going, and where it all might end. There is a nifty after-credits sequence, too, that I’m glad I didn’t miss out on, because although it wasn’t necessary to tie anything together, it was definitely a bit of a smirk that harkens back to an earlier scene.
As a film overall, Fate is tons of fun. For an indie flick as a whole, and a micro-short on top of that, the film really is miles beyond what a lesser writer or director could have done in such a short amount of time. Definitely worth checking out.
