Empire of Dirt (Short, 2017)
Starring Paul Sloan, Mark Steger, Lillian Solan
Directed by Adam Mason
In this short film’s slam-bang opening, we see a man (Sloan) who’s not afraid of gunfire…and getting his own ass handed to him. What transpires next is something that I could loosely describe as “off the rails” and better yet “a personal hell that no one should be forced to endure.” How’s that for a selling point?
Vomiting demons, writhing serpents, and the unrepentant voice of one’s reckoning act as a court of justice for this fellow, and when director Adam Mason described his short film Empire of Dirt as “Oldboy meets Hellraiser,” I’ll admit that I sat up and took notice; and after eye-grabbing this 8-minute presentation, I can agree that his description was spot-on!
The man, obviously hell-bent on some kind of retribution, has to undergo his descent into a nightmarish world where the answers only lie where the pain gets served up on a fiery platter – seriously people, this is something that DEMANDS a stretched-out production as there’s so much more to this story than is showcased in this demented little quickie. It’s basically a hyper-stylized, insanely graphic (and intently violent) jump into the flames of one’s own purgatory – this man’s looking for answers, and when he’s given the chance to level the playing field against those who’ve wronged him – let’s just say that the after-effects will not be safe for the youngins!
Mason knocked this one clear out of the park, and I (among many) can only keep my fingers crossed that this will someday get the chance to expand its blood-soaked wings and fly into a much more amplified display of how far one will go in order to find justice.
Empire of Dirt is, quite simply, one of my favorite short films of 2017.
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Film
Categorized:Reviews
