Romford Film Festival 2022: ‘Colossus’ Short Film Review
Well people it’s getting closer to this year’s Romford Film Festival and while I am super excited to be making my way down there for the first time so that I can bring all you awesome Nerdly readers and Nerdly Out Loud viewers some great content, I also wanted to bring you some reviews from the shorts and features on show over the week of the fest.
I decided to start with what I would say is one of our strongest shorts of the festival… Colossus.
Stars: Levi Hood, John Neisler, Nelson Gonzales, Dawn Spatz | Written and Directed by James Roe
Colossus is the tale of a young navy fighter pilot during WWII. The young man is on what seems to be a routine flight when he is shot down by an unknown force that can only be described as otherworldly. Consumed by a hateful obsession, the young man embarks on a decades-long quest to figure out and kill whatever it was that shot him down.
When I say this is one of the most accomplished shorts of the festival, it’s no exaggeration. The look and feel of Colossus is palpable from the outset. Director James Roe has a firm grasp on not wasting an inch of the frame and it makes for a gorgeous piece of work that shows confidence in its execution. A subtle mix of two genres is often hard to pull off and usually leads to having to pick a path but Roe has managed to craft a story that straddles the line and doesn’t have the viewer muddled.
Our two main leads, Levi Hood as “young man” and John Neisler as “old man,” do a wonderful job of portraying either side of our lead and both performances lend themselves to the slow obsessive-compulsive deterioration of a man trying to make sense of something they don’t fully understand. Particularly on the part of John Neisler, who is doing more of a “let me show instead of tell you” role, a lot can be said about an actor who can say everything while not saying anything.
So yeah, Romford is showing about 120 projects over the week ranging from 3 minutes to 2 hours 20 and for my money Colossus is right up there as one of the best shorts on show. Visually and tonally everything works. It’s also one of those rare occasions when watching a short that everything felt so on the money and “right” that I didn’t need anymore because it had succeeded in ticking all the boxes it set out for itself.
Do yourself a favour and check out Colossus!