REMNANT – A Short Film by Andy Stewart

Remnant (2015)
Directed by: Andy Stewart
Written by: Andy Stewart
Starring: Gordon Holliday, John Scougall, Lucy Goldie, Nicholas Vince, Remo Catani

REMNANT
A Short Film by Andy Stewart

A young woman who’s repeatedly late for work oversleeps only to find herself covered in bruises when she awakes. Experiencing terrible vivid nightmares, she fears for her sanity as her life seemingly slips away from her control.

Director Andy Stewart is back with short film REMNANT that oozes the same body horror styling we’ve previously seen in Dysmorphia, Split and Ink. This particular outing may lack the red stuff and body infliction we’ve seen in his other works, but REMNANT still manages to use the body as a tool for both telling the story and freaking viewers, like myself, out.

Actress Lucy Goldie puts in a tremendous emotional performance as troubled lead character Claire Miller. It soon becomes apparent that her punctuality at work has been questionable for some time, something which her boss Ian (Nicholas Vince) is concerned about both as her boss and as a friend. Though she’s playing the victim card blaming her lateness and tired appearance on a lack of sleep, her night time activities which include hitting the local nightclubs only serve to fuel the idea that she’s bringing this upon herself. But do we know the full story?

There’s some beautiful cinematography work in this film with the focus often changing from foreground to background and vice-versa. The use of a red hue against the black backdrop also gives the film a threatening sense of menace as the dream-like visuals leave an everlasting haunting impression on main character Claire, both physically and mentally. Andy Stewart certainly knows how to achieve exactly what he wants visually to help tell his story and has executed it brilliantly throughout all his movies whilst retaining a gritty edge and his own unique style.

With such a high quality set of short films up sleeve, I can’t wait to see Andy’s talents unleashed upon a full length feature film.