From Omeleto.
A repairman arouses suspicion.
LOCKSMITH is used with permission from Corey Benson Powers. Learn more at https://coreybensonpowers.com.
Emma is a professional woman living alone in an apartment in the city. On a busy morning, she goes about getting ready for work but is distracted by the arrival of a slovenly locksmith, who has come to fix her broken lock.
At first, her interactions with the locksmith are perfunctory. But after a few of his odd statements and some seriously sketchy behavior, she begins to suspect the locksmith has another agenda altogether.
Directed and written by Corey Benson Powers, this short drama-thriller is a brief but potent orchestration of suspense, tension and sheer creepiness, as an independent working woman finds herself in a terrifyingly vulnerable situation. The narrative is simple enough: a locksmith arrives at a woman’s apartment one morning as she’s getting ready to work. But the subtle but deftly clever camerawork and direction entrap the unsuspecting heroine in a complex, chilling web that plays with and against her growing suspicions.
The visual style is key, though it doesn’t announce itself with flashy movement or stylized cinematography. The colors are coolly muted, if a little shadowy, and the movements are seemingly simple at first. But as Emma tries to go out her morning and deal with the oddness of the locksmith — and the strange details of his visit slowly accumulate into inappropriateness — the visual approach evokes an unsettling, dissociative voyeurism. Lurking just outside the door, drifting stealthily behind an unsuspecting Emma or letting the locksmith creep into the margin of the frame, viewers are immersed in the act of furtively watching Emma, putting us in the shoes of a potential threat to her.
As Emma, actor Paige Bourne captures her dawning realization that something isn’t right, and she can assert herself at a key moment. Actor Pete Berwick as the locksmith is effectively sketchy: even when he’s lurking in the shadows, his posture, voice and halting way of expression telegraph someone who isn’t entirely normal, and, logically, Emma would see him as the threat in her midst.
Sly, smartly crafted and increasingly chilling to the end, LOCKSMITH reveals it has more up its sleeve in terms of surprises. It ends on what some might regard as a cliffhanger, though it isn’t much of a leap to guess what happens next. It aligns with the subversive modus operandi of the film itself, in which the act of watching someone without their knowing is a violation — and our own witnessing of it an uncomfortable but compelling compulsion that we can’t stop participating in.
