A sinister opening reel turns out to be something everyday – a car engine – in snappy supernatural short Ride Baby Ride (2023), showing us straightaway that all our woes are going to be vehicular – starting with the pair of geezers hoping to sell on the car in question, though treating themselves to a bit of sexist nonsense when it turns out their female mechanic (egad! Celina Bernstein) not only knows what she’s doing, but drives a hard bargain on the resale price. Who, I ask you, in that entirely reasonable position, wouldn’t simulate intercourse with the car, or start describing the mechanic as ‘a little spicy’? She looks on, honestly seeming a little tired of the shenanigans. You get the sense this happens more often than she’d like.
But is there more to these guys? Is it the car that’s ‘a little spicy’? A few minutes later and you might be asking yourself whether the car might not have had some kind of supernatural influence on them, because it seems like the car is in fact supernatural. Once inside the garage, it starts – doing things. Oozing. Flinging open its doors. And, if this could be put down to the car’s vintage (a ’78 Camaro!) and condition – well, perhaps not the oozing – it’s soon clearer that there’s something else going on here when, as the mechanic investigates the car’s strange quirks, it seemingly deliberately mangles her leg, then traps her inside.
Cars are claustrophobic at the best of times – probably the smallest enclosed spaces we routinely occupy – but things get quickly far, far worse with our now panicked protagonist trying to free herself from seatbelts which may have taken some cues from the Deadite-infested branches in Evil Dead (in several key respects, from soundtrack to scenes to titles, this film clearly pays its dues to the great horrors of the 80s). As the car really shows its hand (!) this turns into an impressively bloody battle of wills, woman vs. machine, and this is a spirited solo performance from Celina Bernstein in a film which manages to be genuinely ominous, as well as in other moments grisly and OTT. With a runtime of seven minutes, writer and director Sofie Somoroff knows better than to get bogged down in an origins story for the supernatural presence here – it just is, it’s nasty, and it becomes an issue of survival.
Ride Baby Ride offers a simple idea nicely executed, calling on the likes of Maximum Overdrive (1986) and more recently perhaps, King Car, but keeping things in the horror vein, taking a real relish in building up to scenes of genuine peril and bloodshed – no mean feat with a just a few minutes at your disposal. It’s a stylish, well-made calling card all in all, and you can see it on horror short film channel Alter from the week of March 11th. In fact, here’s a link: have at it!