Finding short films that you like means that you get to see what that cast and crew is up to by creeping around curiously. It’s like Facebook stalking, except you’re checking IMDB pages and YouTube. Okay, that doesn’t make it sound much better, so I’ll quit while I’m ahead. A while back, I covered a short called The Cop Cam by filmmaker Isaac Rodriguez. I was impressed, so I’ve been keeping tabs, as I am wont to do. Well, he’s got a new one for us. And it’s under one minute. Clocking in at 40 seconds, here’s The Face Swap.

Like a sucker, I totally jumped.

First  off, one piece I really enjoyed: there’s no sound for the first 15 seconds. That’s a stylistic choice that unnerved me a little bit. It’s the visual with a complete lack of audio that disoriented me more than anything else.

Which isn’t to say that the concept isn’t creepy – oh is it creepy. How much would something like this freak you out? Really, if Face Swap decided to focus on the dark area and pull a random, distorted face onto mine, I wouldn’t have time to think. You can bet your sweet ass I’d fling my cat at the dark opening (sorry, Ebenezer, Mommy loves you, I promise) and go screaming for the door. It happens so fast that I can’t really judge the main character though: she’s had a scare, she’s disbelieving, and then she sees a bad thing. It’s not like she passed by an unlocked door on her way up the stairs running away from the killer.

All in all, I liked it. Good scares in under 45 seconds are hard to come by. Happy Saturday.