With almost all phones being touch screen today, it has become easier and easier to butt dial someone. Most of the time on the receiver’s end it just sounds like indistinguishable noise and they hang up soon after. However, there may be a time where the person on the other line is having a conversation and the receiver can hear talking. At its most unlikely it will be a conversation that the dialer does not want the receiver to hear. Hang Up! creates a scenario where the receiver of the call is hearing the most shocking and horrifying conversation of their life and the audience is along for the whole ugly ride.

While a work Gary, a middle-aged man, receives a butt dial from his wife Emelia. Before he has the opportunity to inform her of the mistake she begins to talk about the displeasures of their marriage. She, assumingly, is talking to a friend about how she has almost always been disgusted by him. That for years she has been making up excuses to stay away from him sexually, even going to the extremes of having their daughter to distract him. She then begins to not only talk in great detail about a sexual experience she had with another man, but her horrifying plans to get rid of Gary for good.

Hang Up! goes straight to the throat of anyone who has ever worried about the secret resentment of a loved one and doesn’t stop until they are in tears. This short is utterly horrifying when we see how much disgust and disdain someone could have for their “significant” other. Each time you think that things are as bad as they are going to get, they get exponentially worse. The way the writer uses such piercing, horrific, dialogue along with elegant camera angles, and a beautiful black and white filter only makes this short feel far too real. I would recommend Hang Up! to anyone who loves real-life horror in the same vein as  Hereditary, but viewer beware you are in for a nightmarish experience.

Hang Up!
RATING: UR
FATAL PICTURES' HANG UP!
Runtime: 14Mins.
Directed By:
Written By:

About the Author

A huge horror fan with a fondness for 80s slashers. Can frequently be found at southern California horror screenings and events.