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Written and Directed by Roger Sampson
Starring Ashley Maure
Short Film Review by Rachel Pullen
Pregnancy is something that is in a sense a body invasion, you incubate a mini human for nine months as it feeds off your food, changes your mood and behavior and often can affect your mental health. Due to this babies, pregnancy and children in general have been the subject of horror films time and time again, but what about the people who help these women through this time of change in their lives? what about the doctors involved in whole process?
Short film Visitor comes storming in with a whole new approach to the pregnancy as well as body invasion theme within horror. Turning the tables, we follow the story of a fertility doctor played by Ashley Maure who has begun developing a new medicine that can help improve a woman's chances of not only conceiving when suffering from fertility issues, but conceiving highly intelligent babies.
During this development she beings to receive messages from an unknown person, invading her personal phone in her personal time, telling her she has a visitor. We watch helplessly as she does very little to defend herself from these persistent and anonymous texts until it is too late.
Maure embodies this role with great skill. Body invasion is in essence like playing two roles within a film, we see Maure tackle this in a direct manner, never for a moment steering too far away from the believable, she delivers a diversity between the two stages that her character goes through, and this ability ensures a enjoyable viewing experience.
As well as the competence of Maure's performance, director Roger Sampson carries us through this story with ease with well constructed camera angles, and even though it has the feel of a made of T.V. movie, it does not diminish the story that is being delivered.
Body invasion is not something that could be easy to tackle on a small independent budget, however Sampson understands that it's not always what you see that can create fear and suspense, the invasion of her phone and her personal space is not only a good metaphor for how some women may feel during pregnancy, but is also a cheap and effect approach to delivering his script.
Visitor leaves questions unanswered and the viewer wanting more, this short clearly is a concept film which could be developed into a full length piece and with a bigger budget could really pull off an interesting approach to the body invasion genre.
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