From Omeleto.
A man is paranoid.
Ethan and his girlfriend Sara are currently in a long-distance phase in their relationship as she works out of town for her tech job. They use video calling and other technology to keep in touch, but the distance can’t quite muffle the tension in their fraught relationship.
Ethan is struggling and seeing a therapist. But as his relationship with Sara deteriorates, his mental health also frays, and he becomes increasingly paranoid. Not just about Sara, but if his devices are listening in on him, watching his every move and trying to manipulate his life.
Directed and written by Greg L. Smith, who also plays the lead role of Ethan, this austere yet chilling short drama-thriller captures one man’s unraveling, as his relationship with his girlfriend falls apart and he grows increasingly paranoid about the technology in his life, which he is convinced is listening in on his most private thoughts and conversations and feeding him messages via his social media and devices. Though there are no creatures or monsters, the film takes the lingua franca of psychological horror to weave a web of suspense and paranoia using very contemporary means.
The film is a disconcertingly quiet one, told with a workaday, almost drab and muted visual softness, its initial tone setting the tenor for Ethan’s own inner emptiness. But within this psychological vacuum, an anxiety festers, which escalates as the devices in Ethan’s orbit prove increasingly invasive. Ethan can’t give up his devices; he relies on them for comfort, companionship, and even access to pleasure. But they begin to weaponize Ethan’s most intimate searches, conversations and recorded thoughts, and they prove instrumental to his undoing, which the narrative charts with almost surgical precision.
As Ethan, actor Greg Smith plays an almost archetypal "nice guy" beset with troubles, which grow increasingly pointed and distressing as he’s bombarded with invasive messages, ads, sounds and images. His girlfriend, Sara, is played by actor Kelly Nugent with a brittle, hardened, almost callous manner, and at first, we wonder why he’s even trying to maintain a relationship with her. But as Ethan unravels, what emerges is a game of 3-D psychological chess, leveraging the omnipresence of tech in our lives to rupture a man’s hold on reality — and gain some revenge in the process.
Ratcheting up the intensity, LISTENING then becomes almost operatic in its final movement, and what emerges is a surprisingly layered, complex portrait of both a man and a relationship, where an initially innocent and seemingly decent surface hides something nefarious and icky. It’s a slow burn of a reveal, but as the pieces fall into place, so do its themes of invasion, violation and boundaries, both from people and from tech. (It also rewards repeat viewings, for clues that were hidden in plain sight.) Fans of Michael Haneke’s cinema of estrangement will find much to be fascinated by here — as will anyone who has ever been unnerved by how much our devices know about us and how deeply they’ve been embedded in our lives.
LISTENING. Courtesy of Greg L. Smith at https://smithlgreg.com.
