In the LostWitch Releasing’s short film Who Watched Them Die?, there is very little dialog, but one of the few spoken lines is from a potential victim. “What am I gonna do?!” she asks herself, after frantically running away from three masked men in the woods – one-armed with a knife, the other two with video cameras. The answer comes quickly, as the one with the knife comes in from off-screen: “Nothing,” he says to her, but the real answer probably should have just been “Die.”
Packed with blood over its very short 8 minutes, Who Watched Them Die? jumps in immediately and gets right into the action. We meet our three masked murderers as they stomp through the woods. They’re looking for something they’ve lost. We find out very quickly that it’s a girl. They find her writhing and slithering along the dirty ground on her belly, a small amount of blood falling from her mouth. When they find her, she begs them not to kill her. They can walk away, and pretend none of it has ever happened, she pleads, all to no avail.
The short is not long on plot, but in the end, it’s not long at all. There is a hefty amount of blood, probably more than most Hollywood films would have these days, as the two girls are violently stabbed to death. I don’t think I’m giving anything away, based on the title, by saying that only our killers are left standing.
I am actually hoping that this film, which is struck with such a great title and teases the viewer with what could be a great story, is eventually fleshed out into a full feature, or at least a longer short. With only 8 minutes of screen time, it’s hard to find any flaws with the movie at all, except to say that its 8 minute runtime might be the biggest flaw of them all, because it leaves you desperately wanting to see who dies next.
The real answer to the question poised by the film’s title? We do…and I want truly want to see more.
