A seemingly normal bickering between a middle-aged man (Todd Thomas Dark) and a teenage girl (Hayley Ault) as they head out to a camp site becomes a bit more sinister as their true purpose becomes more evident. Are they father and daughter or warden and charge, and what exactly is in the garbage bags they drag through the forest?

A graduate from York University’s film program, Jonathan Elliott builds a good amount of suspense with this 12-minute short. We are led to believe that adolescent insolence is something that every teenage girl dishes out, but here it’s more foreboding and puts a decent spin a well-known mythology. It also touches on suppressing your true self and the consequences of this denial. I would love to see another 10 minutes of this short, especially with Dark’s performance that tells everything but still leaves you guessing about both their predicaments.

Screens (as part of The Witching Hour Shorts Programme):
Friday, October 20, 11:59 PM, TIFF Bell Lightbox

Ticket information can be found at the imagineNATIVE website.