By Keri O’Shea
I’ve always thought that the basis of a good short film was simplicity. With a limited time scale, it makes little sense to crowd your film with masses of ideas and impressions. And, sometimes, that simple, but beautifully-expressed idea can be incredibly creepy – not packing a punch, keeping the jump scares to a minimum, but effectively setting up a scare. Thus is the case with The Ten Steps: this is a film which deserves credit for holding out on the audience just long enough to plunge its main character into a seriously sinister punchline.
Director Brendan Muldowney introduces us to Katie (Jill Harding) and Stephen (William O’Sullivan), big-sister-in-charge and little brother respectively, who are home alone at their new house in Ireland while their parents seek to impress at a works dinner, one which could mean a big step up the career ladder for Katie’s father. For that reason, Katie’s aggrieved phone-call about her little brother messing around doesn’t go down too well.
She’s really in trouble when the fuses go, though. Left in darkness in a still-strange house, she has no choice but to call back. Her dad, sensing her growing panic, puts impressing his boss to one side to help her get down into the cellar to access the fuse box…
(Spoilers to follow)
The Ten Steps takes a sympathetic situation and extends it, using something very familiar to develop its horror and in so doing, grounding us in the situation; we’ve all had the lights go out on us and had to feel our way through the dark to restore order. Well, in this yarn, order isn’t restored, and we’re plunged into darkness ourselves as we’re left to ponder the implications of the film’s brilliant, understated ending. All of this works because of a strong array of performances, particularly from Katie, who carries the weight of the growing tension very well.
The film is very well balanced, too. We see enough of the light and ease at the restaurant to really appreciate the shift to darkness and isolation back at the house – as well as getting tantalising glimpses of something which goes beyond normal parameters. Camera angles, sound effects and dialogue build very steadily; this is a short film with a great idea of pace, which allows the film’s ending to have considerable weight, and without resorting to flashy reveals at any point. It’s a brilliant little ghost story, at its best with the lights turned low and the screen maximised, and a fine example of its genre.
(As a side-note, I’d like to say that director Muldowney is evidently a versatile filmmaker: I was surprised to find out, when I was seeking permissions to embed this film here at Brutal As Hell, that he also directed the rather more urbane feature Savage, which was favourably reviewed by Ben last year.)