File Not Found Anchors Scary Horror of Female Grief on Emptiness

INTRODUCTION
Set in 2035, File Not Found chronicles the aftermath of Maggy’s suicide, her grieving spouse, Jenny, and Sophie, an augmented reality-AI therapy/security system. However, the undead horror that triggered the suicide created a grieving spouse, but replaced Maddy with Sophie lurks in the wait for Jenny.

THE REVIEW
File Not Found is a sci-fi/horror short film by English filmmaker Lindsay Bennett-Thompson. It is not sly about its feminine commentary on the horrors of a woman in grief. It anchors this horror on emptiness, or someone missing or something important that’s removed from its place. A missing file, memory, or perhaps everything above. I’d rather think of File Not Found as a psychological thriller that deals with grief using technology and heightens the dramatic action with a new kind of horror from a very scary place. However, I am awe-inspired by the blend of many styles or genres in File Not Found. Lindsay birthed a dramatic, emotionally intelligent narrative that mixes sci-fi, horror, psychological thriller, and the supernatural into an uncompromising distinct theme.

Lindsay crafts File Not Found to entertain intelligently. She weaves a Utopian reality set in grief with augmented reality and traditional horror. While File Not Found is her fourth short film, it has become distinct that she is forging a niche for herself with her female-led stories sci-fi stories. File Not Found is a sleek and stylishly designed film. Lindsay takes our future and dramatizes it before our eyes. It is our future life brought into today. As Jenny (Lucie Browne) recovers from the suicide of her wife Maddy (Lindsay Bennett-Thompson), she is aided by an AR or Augmented Reality device recommended by her shrink. This illusion helps her cope with the tragedy and loss. But when this illusion is disrupted she is forced to confront the horror left behind. Lindsay crafts a tragic story. She explores the interaction between human suffering grief and an AR. The result is an illusion from which Jenny chooses to live without. Then a disruption of this illusion amplifies her grief into despair and then tragedy.

Watch the trailer for FILE NOT FOUND (2022) a Sci-fi/Horror short film

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Do not be fooled by the sleek, smooth, futuristic production design that themes File Not Found. Underneath it is a foreshadowed horror, someone missing from the world of the dead. And there is more missing. The opening montage centers on Sophie (Augmented Reality). A giant letter “C” labels her device console, I figured it should be an “S”, but, hey we are missing a lot of stuff right now. The film title “FILE NOT FOUND” blinks on the screen, a word at a time, ironically suggesting a missing title. Then, it fades away leaving Sophie’s console in the frame for the fade-off. The filmmakers mixed the performance, and the space to fit the “missing” theme perfectly. That certainly is a great collaboration between the production designer, cinematographer, and director. I think Lindsay understands the economic format of the short film perfectly; there is barely any notice of the number of actors on screen.

In the montage, an off-screen voice breaks the silence. AR Consultant (Rachael Hayden) comments to a patient. We see Jenny’s reflection in a mirror held against her face in response to the question, “how do you feel?” A lot had occurred before the opening montage. We have no prologue, but the look on Jenny’s reflected face tells it all. She has suffered a loss, she is missing her spouse, Maggy. The dramatic question then becomes, “can Jenny find happiness again, after her painful loss?” Sophie helps Jenny get through with access to her memories. Yet, Sophie is more, she is implanted into Jenny’s head to read her memories as files. Jenny activates Sophie with voice commands (dates). These recreate past events of Maddy, so Sophie is a temporary therapist for Jenny. Through Sophie, Jenny develops a fortitude to deal with the painful loss of Maddy. Until it becomes easier for Jenny to feel better, she is dependent on Sophie for therapy.

The story of File Not Found is set in a time when the politics of democracy have fully embraced and adopted LGBTQ+ rights as inclusive of basic human rights. This is a future where liberalism is a defacto in a democratic setting. The film comments on this by the marriage of Maddy to Jenny who is seen as a natural or normal couple in this society. Yet, it goes further to indicate that it is a world filled with more women than men. Maybe no men even exist. Yet, it is a nice twist on the current gender landscape in today’s movies.

The supernatural theme of the movie is set in the character of Maddy who we never met. We only know her through Jenny’s memories projected as Sophie AR. While Sophie re-creates Maddy’s persona as an interactive image, she is clearly doing a type of conjuring, but only scientifically. Maddy actually did a conjuring of sorts with friends in their matrimonial home. We see this when Maddy offers Jenny the opportunity to join her reading (spiritual meeting), which Jenny declined after glancing horrified at her spiritism book on their kitchen table. This supernatural theme sets the tone for the horror and death to come. While Jenny and Maddy’s house looks sleek and futuristic, it might be a haven for at least one spirit of the dead.

Maddy practices spiritualism. She holds a philosophy or doctrine, opposing materialism. She claims the transcendency of the divine being. The altogether spiritual character of reality and the value of inwardness of consciousness. Her character wears earthen or wooden jewelry. She even proposed to Jenny with a non-metal ring. If spiritualism is the belief or doctrine that the spirits of the dead, surviving after the mortal life, can and do communicate with the living, especially through a person (a medium), Maddy is particularly susceptible to their influence. Her practice associated with this belief released someone back from the dead, a horror, that caused her apparent suicide, or so Jenny thought. Though she doesn’t have a proper conclusion on how Maddy died, she got a glimpse when Sophie rebooted and found a lone file on Maddy’s tablet. This horror Jenny discovered is about to haunt her life. Until now, the dramatic helplessness of the protagonist, Jenny served to draw the audience into a personal encounter with the audience’s own grief. Then, the missing file which showed Maddy bleeding, crying, and explaining how she let something loose (Maddy is a medium) in the house triggered and heightened the audience’s grief through Jenny’s horrors experiences.

Jenny would usually call out a date or file name, to which Sophie plays as AR. Then, Jenny would interact with Maddy as though a living person. All we have to see about Maddy happened in the prologue. So, every scene with Maddy is a feedback of a past or a memory re-created by Sophie. Only this time, Jenny is horrified to see Maddy in a real video, (not a conjuring) of her wife’s death, which doesn’t look any bit like a suicide. While Jenny does not believe in spiritualism, she abhors it, yet it confronts her as a fleeting or disappearing presence in their house. She races downstairs away from a figure with claws that looks unreal trying frantically to get out of the house, thanks to Sophie’s reboot all doors stayed locked.

Jenny has mixed fixed feelings of horror, fear, and shock about her current situation, but clearly, she isn’t where she wants to be. It is hard to tell if Jenny wants to be with Maddy in the afterlife, but in the end, everyone is missing in File Not Found, except Sophie, who we hear mention “AR restored to a 100%” before the fade out.

SUGGESTIONS
There is a general mild pace to the actors’ performance and the camera movement throughout the film. I can understand this translates the mood of Jenny to the audience as emotion. However, I think the scenes in which Maddy pop in are more exciting, and need more camera movement. It can help dramatize and heighten the rational thoughts or irrational emotions when the characters are at rest. I liked the use of dopplegangers; Sophie’s AR of Maddy was freaky or scary to Jenny the first test she got. Later, she learned to appreciate Maddy’s AR Imagery as calming, since she always enters a dialogue with her. That’s the first introduction of a horror theme in File Not Found. Dopplegangers are useful cinema or filmmaking tools for the director as Lindsay proved with Maddy.

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Writer & Directed: Lindsay Bennett-Thompson

Cast
Lindsay Bennett-Thompson as Maddy
Lucie Browne as Jenny
Rachael Hayden as AR Consultant
Talli Lyndsey as Shi

Crew
1st Assistant Camera: Alex Coleburn
1st Assistant Director: Lee Preston
Location Sound: Brad Sweetman
Makeup & Special Effects Make-Up: Rebecca Tupman
Art Director: Angie Yiannaki
Behind The Scenes Photography: Chris Thompson
Colorist: Heinz Donnelly Schmidz – FilmColorGuide
Filmed and Edited: Dave Thorp
Audio Post-Production Studio: 344 Audio

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