Footage of a grizzly bear, unedited, with a whispered amateur commentary underneath; only a short commercial for Claridryl breaks this short film up.
As the title suggests, this film opens with footage of a bear without any edits. This gives way to a commercial which has a "skip" button in the bottom right that will not work; a young mother with two children sings the praises of the wonderdrug Claridryl as it helps her cope with the pressures of the demands on her. As the commercial ends, we continue to stay with the woman as she drives home – a drive that becomes odd to say the least. I will not say too much about the specifics of the short film, because one of the good things about it is that it does get oppressively odd and it helps it work if you do not know even where it is going. It isn't that it has a narrative so much as I just enjoyed how it sneaks up on you.
The film's change is very well done. The commercial aspect is totally convincing in its bright colors, cheesy acting, and on- screen text. This settles down a little in terms of color and tone, and at the same time the commercial voice fades onto the car radio in a way that I really enjoyed as a segue from one to the other. Even more impressive though is how well the lead actress Donelli also does this with her face, gradually going from the big smile and insincere joy, down to something more real, then further down from there. Her performance makes a lot of the film work as well as it does – well, both of "hers" since the role is played by twin sisters. Both are excellent in all scenes and convince no matter what emotion or state they are playing. This sense of realism in their performance is what makes the film genuinely unsettling and chilling.
That it sneaks up on the viewer is also what hits hard; the oddity, the sense of weirdness, then suddenly something terrible and relentless. The second half of the film is a little weaker than the first but it still works very well as it piles into the world it has made. It worked very well on me, watching it on a small screen with the sun outside the window – Lord knows what it must have done to people who actually watched it at the original 4am broadcast.
