The Saving
With a runtime of only 14 minutes, THE SAVING packs a lot of heart and story into its small package directed by young filmmaker MJ Slide. The story focuses on a man, Paul Connel (Patrick Hussion) who sees the suicide of a friend’s daughter Skye Matthues (Stephanie Ibbotson) in his dreams, and also sees he is unable to stop her. In reality Paul finds Skye and tries to assuage her guilt about the death of her parents, and the direction she’s chosen in her life. For a short student film this movie has a lot of layers and themes that it tries to tackle, sometimes being a bit emo, which really seems to fit the female lead’s character anyways, other times coming off a bit sci-fi, and at all times having characters grounded in reality.
The acting is very well done, and the two main leads definitely have the right chemistry for their roles. While their relationship is tenuous at best at the beginning, you can sense the tension between them, and when they grow closer towards the end you can certainly feel a warming glow between them. Special attention should be given to Stephanie’s character Skye who has to shoulder the burden of most of the emotion in the film and does it very realistically. I think having a young female director at the helm of this project really helped to capture what Stephanie’s character was going through in a very effective way because the director (also the film’s writer) was able to emotionally connect with that character.
The score and music for THE SAVING fit right in with the aesthetic of the overall mood of the movie. The film suffers from one thing a lot of indie films suffer from though. While the score in the movie is excellent, it often feels layered on top of the other audio, and also sometimes drowns out otherwise well-written dialogue. The cinematographer feels very indie as far as the visual quality, but the look of the film, the overall production value, and the style choices are very well done.
The pacing of this short is well done, and while it feels a little confusing to follow in the first couple of minutes, it gets itself straightened out fairly quickly before your interest wanes. The movie doesn’t feel like a fourteen-minute short, but instead seems like mere moments have passed, which is generally a sign of good editing.
