A Bitter Murmur is a sweet tasting that features a few tidbits of ghost-story horror and a drizzling of psychological thrills. The film is less than 8 minutes long — I was hooked within the first minute, introduced to a doe-eyed but relatable lead who was dropped into a world of paranoia and paranormal activity for our enjoyment. Written and directed by Manuel Baeza, A Bitter Murmur startles, builds paranoia, and ends with potentially more ghost stories to tell.

Sam (Cailyn Rice) is starting over in a new city with her husband, but feels the crushing loneliness of his busy schedule, being far away from family, and not having a job to occupy her mind. The stress of adjusting causes an old ghost from her childhood to reappear in her life, haunting her at night and startling her awake for nights. Sam decides to visit a therapist to talk her issues out, but questions whether she should share her story, and whether it would help at all.

A Bitter Murmur starts out with a sweet cold opening that grabs both the lead character and the audience in a startling way — a perfect setup of ambiance for this psychologically charged paranormal thriller. The movie — and the lead character — scream for a longer story to be told. I was so fascinated with the story that I was compelled to watch it a few times to make sure I did not miss any clues as to what manifested Sam’s ghost, and what keeps the entity interested in Sam.

I was impressed by the practical effects makeup used for the poltergeist in this movie, played by Bar-Shalom. She is only shown in glimpses, but the glimpses of her wrinkled and lifeless visage were truly effective, particularly when paired with the lead actress, Cailyn Rice, and her knack for perfectly reacting to her jump scares. I am not usually a fan of jumpscare reveals, but I’ll allow it when they are actually unexpected and when the image of the characters is designed to haunt the audience for more than just the film’s viewing, as was the case with A Bitter Murmur.

A Bitter Murmur is a sign of great things to come from all artists involved with this project. Cailyn Rice’s performance was feature-film-worthy, I could watch her oscillate between trying to keep calm and losing her cool for hours. The directing and editing also made A Bitter Murmur a consistently interesting watch with perfect pacing and camera framing. The only thing that I did not find quite fit with the film was the title itself — unfortunately, as A Bitter Murmur is only a short film, its title may be alluding to a more fleshed-out and bitter background story for its lead character, who we mostly only learn about through expositional therapy sessions in this film due to the time constraint. I look forward to any feature-length versions of this film in the future.

8.5 Out of 10