Genre – Promising But Dull Horror Shorts
Year Released – 2019
Where I Watched – Shudder
Length – 13 minutes

At the start I figured this would be an A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night rip-off. But it should be so lucky. Girl shows a lot of promise, but like its protagonist, wanders aimlessly until it’s time to get things done. And by then, I’d checked out.

The cinematography is excellent though, and so much better than a short horror film has any right to be. Shaky camera work makes you feel like you’re part of things, though it made my head hurt. Kind of worth it, for that gritty realism vibe. Felt like I was on the streets of London; always a good thing for this Anglophile who’s missing her semi-regular visits to the UK.

More than halfway in, there’s no hint of what could possibly be going on with this girl, which leads to no sense of suspense or dread. (Beyond the perceived strangeness of seeing a young girl walking around London alone in the middle of the night, that is.) Waiting for something to happen as she wanders from here to there, running into folks heading home after their evenings, isn’t my idea of scary. And the blood soaked “climax”? Nice FX, but as there was no fleshed out (heh) character, I was more studying this film than being pulled into it.

The score tries its best to impart a sense of dread, but there’s a dissonance between the blank emptiness of the main character and the “ooh, spooky amirite?” music. But as much as I liked the non-diagetic deep bass and techno beats that slide in and out of the film? It kept me wanting more plot than just Little YT Girl Being YT.

Could be that Girl is supposed to be a deep look into how a privileged white kid can just do whatever…but either Girl is so avant-garde that I’m not cool enough to understand its take on the horrors of the modern white feminist narrative, or it’s a statement on privilege so in-your-face (because duh, Weknowdis) that the creators should be ashamed of themselves. Heck, it could go either way. I can be incredibly clueless. Weknowdis.

Would I watch this again? Maybe. It’s only thirteen minutes, so if someone wanted to watch it with me, I’d hit play. But I can’t see myself itching for it. I like the girl’s backpack though. Cute patches. There. End on a high note. Go me.