Jörn Threlfall’s “Over” is a unique 14-minute short that presents the unfolding of a crime scene in reverse order. Here’s why it’s a must-see.
There are two outstanding elements to the latest short film by Jörn Threlfall, Over. The first is its gorgeous still cinematography, which vividly immerses us in the narrative without manipulating the way we evaluate it. The second is its twist, which comes out of nowhere and shocks us to high heaven. The combination of those two elements makes for some idiosyncratically chilling cinema.
Over presents scenes from a normal suburban British street in backwards order, starting with a distant shot of a few houses in the middle of the night. It’s a still shot, and all we can hear is the whistling of the wind. No music, no manipulation of the camera, nothing. The atmosphere feels very imagist: the objects in view are there for us to see, but we’re not being told what they mean. It’s still, it’s quiet, and it’s dark.
After a little while passes we cut to the same scene, but during the day. Once again, it’s a long, still shot, with a few images of trees and other objects of interest revealed in quick cutaways. This time, however, there are people populating the scene, and we can overhear their conversations. Emphasis there on the “overhear”; the dialogue is loud enough that we can understand it if we focus on it, but not loud enough that we’re forced to focus on it. The entire scene is in full view, and it’s up to us to fill in the blanks as if we were passers-by to the scene.
This aesthetic is perfect, because Over is, at its core, a mystery film. Like a far less dialogue-driven Memento, it gives us clues to an eventual revelation in backwards order, and we’re constantly trying to figure out what’s going on until the shock comes at us like a wrecking ball. Early on, we see a couple pass a bouquet of flowers on the street - has someone died? Then, when we move a few hours earlier, we see a man cleaning up the same section of the street. A few hours more, and police cars are parked in the road and a crime scene is marked.
These images build in a pretty logical order, but we’re left expecting something very different from what we actually get. Thematically, it all makes sense in the end based on everything we’ve seen, but narratively it’s hard to process the smack-bang insanity of what we get at the end. Yet, as with everything else in Over, we’re just given the facts, and left to decide for ourselves what we think.
To that end, Threlfall has created a near-perfect short. Its only flaws are a few momentary detours from its aesthetic; in a few scenes the distant still shots are interrupted by motioned shots that follow the action, which unnecessarily stop the flow of the building tension. Nevertheless, these slight glitches in the film’s matrix are not enough to detract from the overriding energy of the film’s absorbing atmosphere, which really makes you feel like you’re standing on the street as the mystery unfolds.
Threlfall is a newly-rising film director, having recently been named by Screen International as one of their “Stars of Tomorrow” for 2015. Despite this, he’s been working successfully in commercials and documentaries for years, and his maturity and experience is evident in Over. It’s a confident, intelligent short that’s both aesthetically and narratively stunning.
