Anna Marshall has had a tough couple of months. Her husband of 30+ years has recently died and so she now lives alone in her house with nothing to do all day. On occasion her neighbor Julia will stop by with a goodie or two but that is about all of the human interaction that she ever gets, that is until she receives a phone call. One day, while in the kitchen baking Anna receives a phone call from a mysterious stranger who doesn't talk. Confused and thinking that it is a prank Anna hangs up the phone and goes about her business. The next day at the exact same time Anna receives another phone call from the same person who just calls but doesn't say anything once she picks up. Day after day this "secret friend" calls at the same time and no matter what Anna says to get this person to stop harassing her they continue to call everyday. Eventually, Anna accepts the phone calls and begins talking to this stranger. Anna soon learns that silence is sometimes more powerful than a single word. What We Think
Reviewed by The North Star
Run Time: 15 Minutes
Rating: Not Rated
Shorts are the hardest film category to master. You have to get your point across, have people connect with characters and completely develop everything in a regular movie in under about 25minutes. Most movies can't get their point across/ get people to care about the characters in 2 hours. With a short everything must be tight/necessary or the audience will notice and get bored. This was the really good thing about the Secret Friend. Major props to whoever wrote the script/edited this film. Everything was cut exactly enough so that you didn't lose interest but not cut too short so you felt things weren't answered. We received this movie from the films director and couldn't wait to watch it. I'm not going to lie, I had very low expectations for this film for various reasons but I couldn't have been more wrong.
Viola Harris was really good in this role. I didn't think this was going to be a comical movie but she had great timing. Every time there was supposed to be something funny, I laughed and not just baon (this stands for blowing air out of nose, you don't exactly laugh but you kind of just....blow air out of your nose). After watching the short I was walking around quoting the random funny parts of the movie. Viola could also get really serious when the scene called for it. She was really great at staying in character throughout the whole film and being able to switch on different emotions at any moment when the mood of the scene changed. Siohan Fallon was a very random character and was almost not needed at all. The only thing that she was there for was to tell the audience that Anna was a widow which could have been told in a different way. It wasn't that Siobhan was a bad actor it was just that her character was unneeded (minor detail).
The plot was extremely interesting and kept me watching for the full 15minutes. The one thing that I LOVED about this film was that there was no plot holes that I noticed at all and that is a very rare thing. Everything was explained and the one thing that I've noticed with shorts is that people try to bite off more than they can chew and things are often introduced but never followed up on. This was a cute little story that was told in the good time of 15minutes. One of my favorite parts of this film was the ending because as I was watching it I couldn't think of how they were going to end it and I was worried that the ending was going to be unsatisfying, but.....again I was wrong and they thought of the perfect ending. Again, major props to the screenwriter and whoever had a hand in writing the script.
All in all this was a pretty good short and I was really glad that I got to see it! If I had to fix one thing I would cut out Siobhan Fallon's character because I feel that the pace would have gone by a little smother and then little nit picky things like showing random shots of flowers (that I myself wouldn't have picked) but, other than all of that it was really good!! If you ever find yourself with an extra 15 minutes this is a film to pick up an watch, I don't think you will be disappointed.
Real Teen Rating~ A-: See it with some friends!
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