Last Dance

Co-writer and co-director Danny Gibbons (“Solus (Short)”, “Eliza (Short)”) sent us his latest short film Last Dance which he co-wrote and co-directed with Alex Scott.

This short film features Shian Denovan (“Cat Sick Blues”, “Tomoko”) as Daisy, a young woman who has been out for a Sunday evening drink with her friends.

As she gets off the bus to walk the rest of the way home, her route takes her through a local park. A dark park, she is spooked, constantly looking around her and jumps out of a skin when someone comes running past her at speed.

But it wasn’t him she should have been worried about, it was the person watching her.

Arriving home to her parents house she finds she’s home alone, no sign of her parents. She jumps in the shower and, when she gets out, checks her phone to find a number of photographs of her in her house, alone.

She panics, shutting herself in her room and trying to ring the police but her phone will not connect. Then the lights go out. As she slowly heads out of the house, trying not to make any noise, she spots a light at the end of the hall, but it goes off as she gets closer.

Downstairs Alexa blurts into life with the latest news, ending with a story about Daisy who went missing three days ago and still has not been found.

Panicked, she runs out of the house, back to the park and it is here that she is introduced to him, the Smiling Man, Philip Gyford (“Selective Listening”, “Shallow Grave (TV)”), who just wants to dance, with her.

There’s certainly a lot of tension in Gibbons and Scott’s short film Last Dance. I loved the use of incorporating Alexa into proceedings, firmly routing the film in the here and now.

Gyford is a presence when he arrives on the scene, certainly not the smiling man you would want to meet in a dark park late at night, which is unfortunate.