An Unnerving Realisation

While looking back at photos of his younger self with his parents before dinner, Nicholas begins to question why these photos only show him from a certain age. Where are all the pictures from before, when he was born or his years as a baby? His parents reassure him as best they can with their explanations, but Nicholas soon discovers a darker and more sinister reason.

A film that centers around the idea of a dark and long–kept family secret coming to light should be fertile ground for any compelling short, but An Unnerving Realisation unfortunately misses the mark in telling a meaningful story. Technically, the film has no real issues, and the direction really is the aspect that gives the film and its plot that bit more oomph. There are a couple of moments where the film flips from landscape to portrait and back again, which in context is an understandable creative choice to accentuate a POV perspective and there are some other interesting camera angles and tricks implemented too.

But it’s not enough to redeem a lack of polish, depth, and context in the film’s story. While the secret at hand is eventually revealed, the context and burning questions behind it all remain frustratingly unclear, unanswered and the whole thing is left ultimately, unresolved.  Who were these people before this shocking event, what drove it all to happen and who are they now? None of this is ever offered up by the film or even the characters themselves, not by their conversations, their actions, or even their expressions, resulting in a trio of one-dimensional characters it’s hard to get invested in and with too many lingering questions left unsettled.

The performances themselves are hard to comment on, mostly because as mentioned, the actors themselves have very little to be working with to make any kind of impact. Kiely, who actually had the biggest potential to be the most interesting character of the three given the nature of the reveal, instead contributes the least due to his father character essentially being confined to almost exclusively sitting at the dinner table scrolling through his phone, occasionally glancing upwards to make sure the other two are still there.

Lynch has a bit more to do, pulling off the worried yet loving mother look in her interactions with Nicholas, with a knowing exchange between the two at the end. Joseph gets the most to do understandably and performs the part well enough despite this role also being fairly limited, but manages to get the emotion across just right in the film's one key moment.

It all ends without any real resolution or consequence meaning that while this realisation might be unnerving for Nicholas, for the viewer it’s more of an underwhelming one.