Feetsteps

The story is told with precision. You feel you know the language of this imagery; girl at home alone, guy in club/pub. She grazes from the fridge, he misses the last train home. She worries, he calls her from a phone box but forgets to put any money in.

Is this a comedy of errors, another men-are-headless-women-mop-up-after movie? The music goes edgy and then sinister and then thrillerese. Suddenly, the language you thought you understood has switched to a dialect from the land of Odd. The red-headed guy goes back to the club, meets a man in the lav, is drugged and wakes up in a deserted industrial area.

He returns to the station as the train is leaving. He sees himself in a carriage with the lavatory man. Is he dead? Is he suffering from Groundhog Day, a disease of the brain that creates an illusion of replaying incidents over and over and over? Has he been cloned by an alien species, known as Corps Bodysnatch?

Writer/director Duncan Nicol hangs questions from the roof of your mind and leaves them there. This is a convincing and highly original piece of work. Has he been influenced by M Night Shyamalan? Or is this the moment when the power of suggestion breaks the locks on Scottish sensibility?

Doppelganger, n. the apparition of a living person (Cassell). Truth, n. a false assumption, based on paranormal programming (Nicol). Feetsteps, n. a mystery within a code, indicating unease (Wolfe Murray).