My girlfriend is immune to fear. Every time she and I watch anything remotely scary she sits by, stone faced, while I get goosebumps on my arms, freak out at every jump scare, and cover one of my eyes in anticipation. She’s a champ, unflappable. Minutes into ‘Vicious’ by Oliver Park, she was jumping right along with me.
So often, short films of every genre are really just sketches that feel incomplete. In ‘Vicious’, Park manages to do what so many other directors and writers fail to do, he fits an entire story into a film only twelve minutes long. The story itself is simple but Park manages to tell it in a structured way with almost no dialogue to help things along. Relying on visuals and angles to set the tone and move the story, you’re caught up and invested from the very first unsettling scene.
Even better, it’s well acted with convincing details thrown into the mix, a very sense of proper pacing so that nothing is revealed too soon and the end, when it arrives, is scarier than 90% of the full feature films out there, many of which depend on gore rather than focusing on the psychology of fear as Park does.
Want to see it? Well I want you to see it. I was fortunate to get to see a pre-release of ‘Vicious’ in its entirety but if you want to see it, and I strongly recommend it, then you’ll want to head over to Mr. Parks’ Indiegogo page where he’s raising money for his next short film entitled ‘Still’. Once the crowdfunding goal of 5,000 British pounds (7, 181 in American bucks) is reached then ‘Vicious’ will become available to everyone and supporters will get a copy of both ‘Vicious’ and ‘Still’.
Here’s more information about ‘Still’ and why you should contribute to the campaign below. Park is an up and coming filmmaker, the kind the industry needs more of. Go help him to keep scaring us. 
