Last week, Jon Phillips launched a Kickstarter campaign for Needlepoint, a short film that’s met nearly half of its $3,000 budget at the time of this writing already. In his campaign video, the Milwaukee filmmaker and motion graphics artist describes Needlepoint as a “psychological/thriller/horror family thing” which, if you haven’t seen any of his previous films, sounds like a messy combo of genres.
If you have though, you’ll know that Needlepoint, while still in the earliest stages of pre-production, fits right in with Phillips’ ouevre. Geoffrey Broughe Handles Confrontation Poorly, which played as part of the “Storytime” short films at this year’s Wisconsin Film Festival, mixed dry humor and visceral violence in its titular character’s madcap escape from custody. A selection at the 2014 Beloit International Film Festival, Arrowhead is another mashup of comedy and horror.
32 Radians is where it’s really at. The oldest of Phillips’s three films, the short begins with a man regaining consciousness in a dank basement. Scraping his hands against the floor, his thoughts shift from the “bisected bodies” to which his captors have subjected him to Chipotle sauce and lesbians. When his captors return to him — at gunpoint, no less — the bloodied narrator rambles on about his supposed connection with one of the masked kidnappers, whispering in a breathy, self-aware internal monologue that in no way belies his dire predicament. “I have lost my train of thought…” No shit.
Despite hints of mutilation and supreme torture, 32 Radians retains a comedic center with its Seinfeldian mundanity. Because no matter how much blood you’re losing sometimes you just want a Fanta, you know? With a dreamy, half-focus and nods to analog video, Phillips explores the dynamism of the medium through a darkly comedic lens. It’s this same elasticity with perspective already on display in his Kickstarter video for Needlepoint. Even without a promise of humor, the project’s January release date seems like it’s going to deliver more than a little subjectivity.
While you wait, you can enjoy 32 Radians on Vimeo below: