Pictures

Directed by S.L. Allred

Written by Benjamin Allred, Spencer Allred, and

Drew Holman

Starring: Missy Potash and David Cardona

Uploaded Oct. 21, 2015

Watch our review on Pictures

Logline: "Pictures" is the story of a woman who discovers the photographs on her phone reveal what will happen a few moments into the future. She soon realizes, however, there is a sinister presence at work.

Stills taken from Pictures (2015) Review by Hamp Overton

It appears that even our cell phones are not safe anymore. Pictures, a short horror film with over 6 million views, takes advantage of that ever-present device to terrorize us in this unrelenting YouTube favorite.

We start with a woman (Missy Potash) who is trying to decide on which paint color looks best for her room. She takes a break to go into the kitchen and start a toaster. When reviewing her color choices she photographed on her phone, she discovers a photo of the clock on her stove. Surprised, she looks into the kitchen and sees that the clock reads, 8:59, but the photo shows the clock at 9:00. She checks the photo’s metadata, and it says it was taken at 9:00am, she looks again at the clock and it clicks to 9:00.

Hmm, what’s going on? She swipes to the next photo: it’s of her toaster with the toast finished and popped up in the toaster.Moments later her toast pops up. Her time portal camera then shows her a picture of herself taking a photo with her phone of her window. She holds up the phone like in the photo but then zooms in on the image revealing a faint clawed hand outsidepressed up to the window glass. She’s startled but continues tocheck her phone. One more photo leads her into the next room,which is filled with mannequins covered with white sheets and they look just as haunting as you would imagine. Surrounded by them, she approaches the center one and slowly pulls off thesheet, to reveal nothing but a stark, black mannequin.

Somewhat placated, she goes to look out the window viewing a parking lot several floors down. She checks the next image on her phone and, overwhelmed, sees herself laying in a pool of blood on the pavement below. She quickly turns away from the window only to be faced with the covered mannequin which is suddenly right behind her. Terrified, she flees the apartment. And runs out to the parking lot.

In the parking lot she calls out to a man by his car, who comes over to her and asks if she is okay. Our heroine struggles to get words out and before she can the man is clobbered by car, which speeds off. Shocked she looks down at him and realizes it was him in the photo, not her as he is wearing similar colored clothes. She looks up at the window of her apartment just in time to see the same creepy hand from her earlier photo, slip back inside.

The film’s logic is spot on. The entity is using the photos on her phone and other events to steer her out of the apartment for her to be in the right place at the right time to call the real victim to be where he needs to be in order to be crushed by the speeding car.

It’s imaginative and disturbing as the actual victim is not who we thought it would be. Instead, it was someone else all along that was doomed to die in this elaborate and deadly Rube Goldberg machine.

In the vein of horror classics like Final Destination and It Follows, Pictures is where once you are chosen, you are doomed.

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