From Omeleto.
A scientist searches for a meaningful life.
I KNOW THERE’S SOMETHING HERE FOR YOU is used with permission from Sean Robert Kelly. Learn more at https://seanrobertkelly.com.
Bryn is checking her mail one day when she discovers a letter from her brother, Marcus. It’s a farewell missive — Marcus has had some career setbacks and an overall struggle in life, and now he’s withdrawn to the woods in hopes of making contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life, which he hopes will spirit him away from earthly human existence as he knows it.
Alarmed, Bryn goes to her brother and discovers him in a sorry emotional state. It’s up to her to reason with Marcus and get him to move back home with her. But when Marcus’s alien-signaling device kicks up signs of extraterrestrial life, both siblings confront what it means to live in the face of uncertainty, doubt and anguish.
Directed and written by Sean Kelly, this inventive and heartfelt short dramedy combines philosophy, family dynamics and an unexpected dose of psychedelia to examine resilience in the face of crushing disappointment and meaninglessness. Its themes are existential and emotionally heavy, but its handling of its subject matter and characters is empathetic, quirky and funny, making for a film that’s both sincere and entertaining.
Shot with a warm, earthy eye that makes a visual home for Marcus’s eccentricity and Bryn’s groundedness, the narrative’s foundation rests on the relationship between the siblings. The dialogue has a sharp ear for the brother-sister dynamic, with Bryn playing the loving but exasperated sensible one and Marcus the brilliant but erratic thinker and dreamer. For Bryn, this is just the latest in Marcus’s history of peccadilloes, but for Marcus, this is a genuine crisis point. He can’t go on anymore: life’s doubts and disappointments are unbearable, and he wants to leave it all behind.
Actors Jackie Kelly and Kevin Veselka’s interactions vary from anger to defensiveness to goofy, but their excellent and understated performances underline their loyalty and love to each other as family. As Bryn fights to keep Marcus earthbound and convince him to come home with him, she tries to bulldoze him into coming back home with her. But Marcus’s existential dilemma is very real, and one of the film’s strengths is how it takes his suffering seriously, even when foregrounding his quirkiness as a character. This emotional grounding stays solid, even when the film swerves into fantastical territory as Marcus’s plan starts to come to fruition, only to hit a snag.
With its surreal eeriness and aesthetic disruptions, this interlude is almost David Lynchian in character, but without the sense of moral corruption or menace. Instead, it’s both fun and serious, and more than anything, grounded in comfort and acceptance of life’s difficulty and meaninglessness. It lands the ending of I KNOW THERE’S SOMETHING HERE FOR YOU with a sense of relatability and emotional warmth. For anyone who’s ever struggled with the dilemma of trudging forward when you just can’t make sense of it all, it offers consolation in reminding us that we’re not as alone as we feel, even in the face of life’s crushing burdens.
