Jason Roberts’ science fiction thriller was a thinker, and by that I mean that I simply didn’t get it. At all. I sat there in the end dumbfounded, confused, and ultimately unsatisfied. And then I thought, and thought, and then figured out that perhaps writer Aretha Donnelly was asking the audience to decide for themselves what she was trying to get across.
“10 Seconds to Midnight” is much cleverer than I gave it credit for after I finished it, and that’s due to the punch line that doesn’t sink in until minutes after it has ended. The world as we individually know it, John insists, will end once December 21, 2012 arrives, and John is intent on staying confined to his apartment, constructing a mural, keeping track of the world through an ambiguous computer, listens to messages from his friends who call him crazy, and he stays safely confined in the walls that separate him from the outside world counting down through an automated alarm, and prepares.
Roberts and Donnelly really dare to create a thought provoking science fiction thriller that instead asks us to think of the world we’re in, the personal world that we inhabit and then calls to attention that perhaps it’s time to change before something changes it for us. Choose enlightenment, or stay behind where you were. “10 Seconds to Midnight” is a shockingly well directed little short film made within forty eight hours and it doesn’t show. Roberts and Donnelly will leave you in the dust with confusion and contemplation, but it does the trick once the audience lets it sit for a while.
One of the caveats of Roberts film is the unfortunate over the top performance from Jeffrey Vincent Parise. Roberts attempts to convince us that the man is simply off his rocker, but most times he was unfortunately comical and briefly made me question if this was intended as a thriller or a comedic spin on a thriller. Beyond him, the ambiguous giant computer keeping track of pollution, war, and global consciousness was an odd and far-fetched plot device from Aretha Donnelly that I simply didn’t buy. The fact that it’s the future simply couldn’t convince me to ignore this pretty blatant attempt to hold our hand through the story while also trying to keep us in the dark. The director of one of the better horror shorts I’ve seen in a while follows up with a thought provoking science fiction short that begs debates, and self-reflection with some top notch production, and an intelligent tone.