Writers/directors/producers Jeremy Waltman and Adam Lucas have created a mini-masterpiece with their short film, The Empty House. During its short runtime, the film packs tension, mystery, manipulation, and terror into a jack-in-the-box that is wound up and released in a surprisingly brutal ending.
The film follows a young woman, named Marie (Rya Kihlstedt), who is hired by a well-to-do couple to decorate their empty house in the suburbs. The wife drinks, languishing in the shadows, and the cold husband is an imposing boss but promises a lot of money for the job. As the walkthrough goes on, Marie is told to spend the night in the house to continue discussing the renovations, however, rather than having her decorate the house she eventually finds that the couple intends to decorate the house with her.
From the beginning, The Empty House announces itself as a tense thriller, allowing its musical score, which alternates between low and high pitched string music, to create an atmosphere thick with anticipation and mounting dread. The lighting seemed to purposely cast grim shadows, both across the empty rooms of a sordid house as well as the faces of its murderous owners. Cast Rya Kihlstedt, Joseph Culp, Alison Gregory, and Tom Walker all gave excellent performances, portraying characters who each had their own self-interests and emotional baggage, which left me wanting to know more about them beyond the film’s short runtime.
The film is interspersed with soundless flashbacks that give insight into the background of the characters, a perfect example of how at all times, this short employs the show and don’t tell method. Great care was given to the dialogue in this film; writers Jeremy Waltman and Adam Lucas penned a script whose story somehow feels immersive — perhaps it is the steady stream of victims of that past who haunt this place, and the horrifying realization of future victims after the film’s understated but impactful ending.
From An Open Place Productions, The Empty House is a great short film in and of itself, but its layer of social class commentary and violence against women makes it feel like a proof of concept film that begs to have these themes further explored in a feature-length. The Empty House would make for a horrifying slasher movie with the potential to have memorable kills and killers weighed down by their violence and wealth.
MOVIE RATING — 7.5 out of 10 ☠️
