Directed by Kelly Campbell
Starring Moses Murphy, Robert Carney

The world is dangerous and sometimes hopelessness only deepens – or at least that’s the gist I got from Kelly Campbell’s adaption of the short story, An Encounter. In just short of 20 minutes, I had the pleasure of experiencing childhood again, shooting from the euphoria of rebelling against the system to the near-instant and deafening repercussions for stepping outside the system that’s there to protect you.

As a short film, the context and background of the situation we’ve found ourselves in is non-existent, and I admire a film brave enough to forgo it in favour of the story at hand. Which in this case is flogging school, although it’s got a lot less appeal than when Ferris Bueller did it. Did a system let them down in the first place? Maybe, but it’s pure hyperbole to imagine how Stephen and Jay found themselves wasting a day in the sun. All’s I know is that innocence is fleeting and when aimless euphoria leads children astray, it’s terrifying how ambiguous safety can be.

But let me get back to that hopelessness for a second here… Very rarely do I find myself leaving a film, short or feature, feeling worse than I did going into it – and considerably so in the case of An Encounter. Is it a good thing? Do films have to be uplifting or resolute in some sense, or can they kind of just metaphorically punch you in the stomach while remaining ‘good’? It’s a hard question, but it’s easier to justify when the feature plucking away at whatever innocence you have left is shorter than an episode of Friends.

Reviewed by Zak Wheeler

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