This highly stylized short film is a bit of an enigma to me, but it's fun to watch, if just for the inventiveness of it. It has a strong, Sherlock Holmes / Bram Stoker / Robert Louis Stevenson feel to it. It must have been both very simple and very complex to make. The film takes place in the 1930s, if the film can be said to "take place" at all. It's essentially one still image, a photograph that's being combed over, presumably, by a detective in a macabre murder case. The photograph, which actually seems to be a collage of things that happened in one place, but at different times, is looked at with a magnifying glass. Someone with a keener eye than mine, or with more time, might be able to figure out the mystery, but I've watched the film twice and still haven't figured it out.
There seems to be some kind of conspiracy or cult or secret society involved, as all the men in the photo have the same tattoo on their wrists. Also, it could be that they are all the same man. (Are they Mr. Hollow? Who is Mr. Hollow!?) The woman in the center of the photo may or may not also be the woman who is dead inside the car. During the credits there is a newspaper clipping about child kidnappings, and the woman in the photo is holding a child, so I'm inclined to think that she is the murder victim, and that she's been killed for her child. However, the word "Keres" appears at the beginning, during the credits, as well. I looked it up and Keres is a Greek mythological character, one who is associated with darkness and death. So maybe the woman in the photo is a kind of Keres, one who has a thing for other people's children. Anyway, it's a mystery, and I have not solved it. Maybe you will...
Well that was creepy as Hell. My take is that it is the woman's husband dead in the car and she is about to be killed, maybe burned at the stake by the other three men who are in a cult. I liked the passage of time via the wrist watch and expressions on the faces. Just these tiny changes and the motion/speed of the camera, into focus, out of focus, down the branch, onto the woman's wrist was able to tell a lot. Good short. Very creepy.
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