My Dreams Have Been Dark Of Late

When you watch horror movies you may well imagine that it would be great to be wearing a suit of armour so that monsters or psychopaths or whatever couldn’t hurt you – but if these big metal suits are so good, how come they were only used in a few small corners of the world? The answer is that they have some serious weaknesses. Faced with heat, marshy ground, swift opponents or simply exhaustion, many people who fought in them died because of them. Joshua Warren’s memorable little Frightfest short addresses another risk.

There isn’t very much of it – it is, one might say, condensed. When we meet him, the knight (Alexander Lincoln) is running, perhaps fleeing a battlefield. One cannot run for long in steel armour. Ascending a small hilltop, he seeks shelter in a stone gazebo and slumps, exhausted. Then something happens to one of his gauntlets, causing him to wince in pain. Inexplicably, it seems to have buckled in wards. He pulls it off, dropping it on the ground. It does not occur to him that he might want to do the same, and rapidly, with everything else.

What is going on here? Cinematographer Korsshan Schlauer makes the most of pillars and nearby trees and a heavy grey sky. During the Dark Ages, ancient ruins were often associated with the supernatural. Has the knight stumbled into a cursed place? Or is he already dead? Perhaps what we are seeing is a ghost coming to recognise what happened to him in battle?

The explanation doesn’t really matter. Everything is in the moment. Warren keeps the effects simple and trusts in Lincoln’s acting to do the rest. The result is an uncomfortable three minutes which might leave you looking at the armour like you look at the gazebo – as a folly.