Short Film: The Keeping Cost (2020)

  • Director: Travis Darkow
  • Writer: Travis Darkow
  • Stars: Kelsey Darkow, Travis Darkow
  • Run Time: 10 Minutes

Synopsis

The whole film plays backwards.

A guy sits on the step, spattered in blood. He’s holding a note: “He did this” is written on the back of his family photo. He gets up and unbeats a guy to death with a hammer.

He walks backwards into a shed, and then inside the house, where he goes backwards into the driveway and gets into his car.

He then gets back out of the car, goes in the shed for a hammer and beats a man to death with it. He then goes over, sits down and looks at his photo.

Then he beats him to death with a baseball bat. Then he shoots the guy. Now the note says “You did this.”

He screams, “There has to be another way!”

We then see the whole thing again in reverse, and it starts again.

Commentary

I don’t get it. Yes, he killed the guy several different ways. Time loop? Trying to end the story a different way? I don’t think I missed anything here, there just wasn’t anything to make sense of. There was some decent gore shots, but the story made literally no sense.