Making A Splash

In a social media-driven world, there is often a need to be liked more, to be better, bigger and more outrageous to differentiate yourself from the herd, and Chillybox nailed this gross out comedy with aplomb here, pondering some bigger societal questions along the way

The signs are set early when a vlogger prepared to get down and dirty with sex toys has a meer 13 followers, yet idolises a spiritual guru with a 2 million and growing base. Dare to be different, he preaches, and she takes than on board and runs with it.

Through self introspection, a whole lot of water vials and a bucket, the time has come for our heroine to make a splash on the influencer circuit. Given her idol has a natural approach to proceedings, she takes this on board to the extreme and Chillybox tick the box for their genre. Hard.

I loved a lot about this film. The protagonist was fantastic, and the brief snippets of footage from the IG star she looked up to were well done as well. The eyeball fetishim that concluded the film was genuinely striking imagery that would have made Lucio Fulci proud.

Technically rock solid as always. Clean smooth editing and clear sound/sound design being highlights. Yes it was mainly shot in an apartment but the set dressing and framing was done really well, plus that got broken up nicely by the IG superstar footage. A couple of shots very early on were not razor sharp in terms of focus but nothing was glaring.

If I was to raise a couple of personal points with the film, I think that just ever so slightly more motivation for the woman wanting followers and attention would have made her even more relatable. But I am nitpicking. Also I actually am not sure if the final eyepatch shot was needed, as I thought the ending prior to that had kicked my ass in a good way, but that's just me.

Story: 3.5/5
Technical: 4/5
Elements: 4/5
Overall: 4/5

What a tricky review on this one. After being some outstanding films from the chillybox crew over the last few years, including of course competition winning films, the bar has been set so high and expectations for films from this team are always so anticipated. That said I think this years film was exceptional on so many levels. The cinematography was top notch. The pacing was spot on. But where things fell short for me was the storyline. With a blackmirror-esque premise (which we've seen them excel at in previous years) the story didnt bring anything new to the table.
Again this is only because they have set the bar so high in their previous entries that Im labouring on this point. The film is well very well executed and I cant wait to watch it again.