Picnic

A heavy voice-over tells us of a family returning to a forest where the woman was taken when she was a child, however, the ominous tones continue to tell us that things have changed since then as there had been a war. After the title card for some reason we get this same sort of thing again with slightly different words. I'm not sure why it does this because we already know something sinister is going to happen and the short is already pushing that feeling as much as it can, so to add the second round of narration is to overegg what was already pretty eggy by this point.

The narrative here is pretty horrific in terms of what happens and how it happens, but yet I watched the majority of the film feeling quite detached from it and I think mostly this is because of the manner of delivery. Like I said, from the opening scene the tone of the short film is one of sinister foreboding and this heavy tone continues as the short film jumps right into its scenario; there is not a lot of build or a lot of development to it and then from there it is a manner of the film keeping that tension on its way to the end. Unfortunately it does this by keeping the heavy music while the camera moves around and around the forest and the static characters.

Technically the film looks very good and the moving camera does capture some beautiful images to contrast with the horror, but the weakness in the toning and the lack of subtlety in the film really hurts it. It feels like director Gerardo Herrero Pereda (not that Gerardo Herrero – a different one) has decided he is making a dark disturbing film on war but instead of waiting till he can get the rest of us there, he just wants it to happen immediately and, as a result he really forces it and limits how well it works. It is a horrific scenario with a lot of potential but the delivery limits and damages it here.