“Familiar” Short Horror Film Review

Article by FisterRoboto of lefthandhorror.com

Presented by Fatal Pictures

Produced by Zach Green

Directed by Richard Powell

Starring Robert Nolan, Astrida Auza, and, Cathryn Hostick

I’ve watched a lot of short films lately, most of them I remember only because I took on the task of reviewing them afterward. Remembering Familiar shouldn’t be an issue.

John Dodd (Nolan) is a forty-five year old husband with a lot on his mind. He hates his wife and everything she represents to him. Stagnant, forgotten, discontent; they all describe John in his current life of mundane and meaningless existence. He convinces himself things can and will be better if he can just be patient. Soon his daughter will be done with school and he can leave his marriage; he can leave this woman he describes as a monster.

Most of the dialogue in Familiar takes place in John’s head, adding a very eerie and disembodied narrative feel to the film. Utterly forgettable and average on the outside, John’s mind is anything but on the inside. His darkness begins to grow when he finds out his wife is pregnant. Paranoid and angry, he thinks this is all a grandiose plot to further ruin him.

John does a little internet research and orders a bottle of RU 486, and plots his wife’s “miscarriage”. He slips her the meds and waits for the inevitable to happen. His plan works perfectly and we begin to see John’s inner darkness crawl from the shadows.

John begins a literal change as his dark behavior surfaces. I have to gush about how creative the ghoulish effects are in Familiar. Parasitic and disgusting in nature, this short film embraces feature-length special effects. His passenger looks like something H.P. Lovecraft’s mind could have envisioned.

Familiar is an outstanding horror short that relies on wonderful acting to punctuate a short medium. The production value is truly ahead of the competition and doesn’t accept anything less than the standard of professionalism, something not always present in shorts.

If you’re a fan of horror, this isn’t to be missed. Familiar shatters short film expectations in every regard, delivering an expertly crafted and monstrous insight into the mind of one man’s skewed banality.

You can learn more about Familiar at their website: Fatal Pictures.