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Directed and written by Jacob Foster
Starring Jacob Foster
Short Film Review by Rachel Pullen
We have all heard the phrase ‘’If you want a job done well, you have to do it yourself’’ and in Jacob Foster's short film The Great Intellect that certainly seems to be the case. Writing, directing and starring in the piece, Foster takes on a lot for a man so young and early into his career, but that’s not to say that he can’t handle it and The Great Intellect is a platform for him to display his talents, either that or he is a total control freak.
Shot in his apartment on a Nikon Coolpix, microphoned by Foster's iPhone, this low budget short tells the story of a young man who’s living in a world where access to the internet is powered by the human mind, which they call the perceptive palace. But soon our leading man’s perceptive palace decides to malfunction, throwing him into a world of despair, unable to function like everyone else he does what any of us do without the internet in our lives, calls I.T support.
With little to no help offered from the perceptive palace support team, he begins to deteriorate further and further until his basic skills such as walking are slowly being taken from him. As I said earlier this is a very low budget movie, but that’s not to say that it is without its charm; Foster confidently carries the role throughout, expressing the pain and frustration of the character well allowing the viewer to be involved in the storyline and its journey without over the top visual effects.
Unfortunately, this is where The Great Intellect falls short, the storyline does lack greatly, denying the viewer any basic explanations and guidance as to what is going on with the leading character, and even though I believe in not treating the audience as if they are stupid and allowing us to figure plot lines out ourselves, the movie is a little too light on exposition.
Foster creates a platform for his leading role to communicate his fears and worries with another character in the piece by having him text a friend on two occasions, and while this could have been used as a way to give some narration to the storyline and guide the audience a little more throughout the plot, Foster simply uses it for two friends to text about homework.
Overall this piece is a credit to the many hats that Foster wears within the filmmaking process, and while that is admirable, perhaps it is his undertaking of so many jobs that has caused his neglect of the script to be so apparent.
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