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The shorts
from director Patrick Rea are like giant "Gotcha's!" to the audience
most of the item and it's never made more apparent than in "Emergency
Preparedness" a short joke on his fan base who sit and wait on the edge
of their seat as this young man sits in his home listening to a rabid
radio broadcaster explaining the downfall of humanity and how monsters
are corrupting society. Meanwhile he's barricaded himself and readied a
barrage of weapons to take on these beasts, even confronting one he's
trapped in his basement. The direction is as tight as Rea's other films,
as he films with a quick pace amping up the tension every minute,
sucking us in to this little predicament this Omega Man has been yanked
in to and what he's doing to avoid becoming one of them as night falls.
Meanwhile, the performances all around are pretty memorable, and the
final minutes end on a note that just screams morbid from the sight of
its awe inspired bystanders watching in horror.
If you
don't catch on to the twist before it's even forecast mid-way in to
Patrick Rea's "Emergency Preparedness" than you need a crash course
in storytelling 101 and the art of the surprise twist that's not so
surprising. While I always love a good surprise ending "Emergency
Preparedness" takes it safe by pretty much giving away what's
occurring in the title with a hint in the subtle wording and then
just doesn't seem to want to dodge the obvious twist by the time the
final minutes roll around. When we do get to the reveal, much about
this makes no sense, and that's a shame when you consider it's
Patrick Rea who is typically very sharp and clever in his short
films. Prepare for a flooding of spoilers. Shield your eyes. Is this
character mentally ill? Why did he buy in to what was going on
around him so easily? Did no one check up on him in the days he
claimed he was preparing? Did he lose his marbles in the process of
this prank? How elaborate is a prank that goes on for days only
involving people in costumes breaking in to his house? If they knew
he was psychotic why did his friends take part in such a task of
scaring him? Since when do pranks involve breaking things?
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Why did his friend call him up
to warn him he was going to be tricked if they were tricking
him? Did she know he was mentally unstable? Why pull a major
Halloween prank on a mentally unstable delusional man? Did
this guy ever figure to watch a television and double check?
Why pull off such a detailed scenario for this prank if you
knew this man could crack at any time? Did he even know it
was Halloween out there? Was he scared of the trick or
treaters? |
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Did he just buy in to the radio program
and figured he'd protect himself? At no time during his gathering of
supplies did he figure to see for himself that there were trick or
treaters? Did the friends have an intent to hurt him? If not why
didn't his friend seem at all surprised when he pulled his weapons
out on him? If he caught one of the pranksters why didn't they ever
figure to explain it was all a prank? Why didn't this man ever
figure to unmask this person? I don't know, I don't always go in to
a movie expecting to over think things, but with all of the sick
jokes that occur there are too many inconsistencies to sit back
without thinking "Wait... what?" While I'm all for a good prank on
the audience, you have to be sharp about it, and "Emergency
Preparedness" sadly doesn't deliver on its promise from the
beginning.
In spite of the usual brisk direction, "Emergency Preparedness" is Rea's
weakest short film to date. Rea's script comes off as a man so anxious
to tell us the punch line to his joke that he rushes through the set up
setting off a string of inconsistencies that ultimately tarnish the
whole delivery and ends up being weaker than we're led to believe.
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