Primal Fear

Shot for a Horror short film contest in 2023, Primal Fear is a five-minute short film about a girl who’s just trying to get home. Liv (Star) is getting back to her apartment late from work one evening after having been to the store to stock up on groceries. As she parks the car and gets all of her bags out of the boot she is surprised by a stranger, who rather creepily hangs in the background, and materialises as she shuts the door of the boot down. The stranger (Mart), who looks to be around Liv’s age, is wearing a facemask and apologises for startling her. It seems he just wants to help, and in seeing that she is struggling with her bags, offers to take some of the load off by carrying a few things to her door for her. Liv, obviously, brushes him off and declines the help but after a few small insistences and a spoken guarantee that he ‘is not a serial killer’, the two get talking.

The stranger then shows himself to be the most ADHD creep out there as he talks about his allergies and the fact that it’s flu season and whatever else he can think of to explain away his facemask. He is nerdy and anxious and speaks at a hundred miles an hour, while also pointing vaguely into the distance to supposedly identify the building that he lives in just across the road. Eventually, Liv acquiesces and allows the stranger to help her, even though it’s against her better judgement, with those damned social cues and societal expectations again working in the favour of the pushy male predator. With bags in hand the two of them head across the car park and up the stairs towards Liv’s apartment, where she hopes she can get away without him inviting himself inside.

At this point, Primal Fear takes a rather stupid turn and the real horror kicks in, it’s just that it’s so far removed from reality and what we’ve been shown up ‘til now that it really jars with the rest of the film. Liv’s apartment then becomes some sort of lockbox from which she can’t escape and the stranger, well, that’s best left unsaid. In the end, the rug is pulled out from under us again and we find that the previous scenario probably never happened, leaving Liv to deal with the stranger in a better way, but which leaves the audience wondering what on Earth it was all for in the first place.

For a film that’s only five minutes long there’s an awful lot that’s unclear about the narrative of Primal Fear. The oddness of the ‘scary’ scene is one thing, but when matched with the ending and the way the film is wrapped up, suddenly everything becomes muddied. It seems that Liv was just imagining a worst-case scenario, as most women have to do on a near daily basis to keep themselves safe when dealing with pushy, insistent men, but when she gets another chance to relive the situation and stand up for herself, the stranger doesn’t react very well and we’re left to wonder if she has, in fact, made an enemy and made things worse for herself. Unfortunately, that’s where the film leaves us and so the message of whatever writer/director Elizabeth Jean Nicholls was trying to say is lost and any goodwill built up in the mind of the viewer in the first half of the narrative also falls by the wayside.

In saying that, the switcheroos at the end at least add something to the story of Primal Fear and stop it from becoming just another sad, bad horror short. The photography throughout is well handled by James Saint-Surin and everything looks good even though we know it’s just a couple of people in a car park on a dark night. There’s not much to talk about in terms of music and incidentals, but what is there is good and matches with the feel of the film well. Sadly, there’s nothing to gain from watching Primal Fear as the stupid turn is just laughable and the message is lost in the end. Even at only five minutes long you’d be better leaving this alone and watching something which actually makes sense.