‘Cubicle’ Short Film Review
Stars: Charlotte Hamblin, Robert Nairne | Written by Stefan Kaday | Directed by Chloe Wicks
Written by Stefan Kaday and directed by Chloe Wicks, Cubicle is an under-four-minute long short horror film, much shorter than many of the short films I’m used to, yet it manages to be incredibly effective and wonderfully stylish in that minimal amount of time. Woah.
We find a woman sitting in a toilet stall, about to take a pregnancy test, when a couple stagger into the stall beside her. She soon hears moaning sounds, like the couple are engaging in some nookie. Maybe, though… just maybe, there isn’t any *wink, wink, nudge, nudge* going on in that stall at all, maybe there’s something more sinister afoot.
There’s very little going on here to write about, really, in the sense that the time we spend with actress Charlotte Hamblin is so slight, yet she brings a reality to her role, and she’s great considering her lack of dialogue. Her emotional responses to what’s going on are impressive, and it’s this, really, that sells the whole experience. She goes from appearing normal, to amused to terrified in almost the blink of an eye. The way the film is shot is very specific and slick, it uses a single location, an actor and an idea, and gives birth to this curious film, something that took me a little by surprise.
This is one of those shorts that ends with you wanting more, with you wishing you could peek outside of the lens and see more of what’s going on, which is a definite plus. I’ve rarely seen short films of this length do their job so well. Cubicle is a mould-breaking miniature horror flick that is as tense as it is intriguing. An entertaining one that I recommend you check out. I mean, come on now… it’s not even four minutes long.