by NOR AMIGONE | 1^st Place, student prose contest

Director: Ellis Graves
Starring: Merrikat Black, Nico Sebastian

In a Pitch-Black Room is, on the surface, an easily forgotten, low-budget horror movie. The film follows Ruby (Black) and Seff (Sebastian) in the wake of some vague tragedy. It bears more than a passing resemblance to Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, but where Trier swings for the fences in terms of art house shock, Graves pulls back, often to the point of boredom. Still, it is in the mundane moments that this movie becomes one of the most unsettling of the year.

Ruby and Seff begin as a normal, young couple. Black is beautiful as ever. Her big eyes and dark hair bring an innocence to Ruby that contrasts well with the severe edge the character is written with. Her smoky voice makes even the most eviscerating comments delivered by the angry Ruby sound nice. Sebastian has dropped his MTV rockstar look, looking shockingly like a more attractive version of that guy who works two cubicles over from you. Despite this being his first movie, his performance is equal to the more seasoned Black. All those years of music videos prepared him for the sparse dialogue and strong body language required. It’s a shame we haven’t seen anything else from these two since the release of this movie.

The secret genius of this film is that nothing in the foreground matters. The story happens in the background. We begin with a typical drone shot following a car through a northeastern forest road. The sky is blindingly blue. The camera takes us all the way into the lakeside cabin in one long shot that seems to go through the window glass, into the kitchen, and then the living room where we see Ruby and Seff enter. Graves loves his longshots and it could be argued he overuses them. Though his technique is nearly perfect. Rather than cutting from one character to another, Graves pans the camera between them. Sharp-eyed viewers will notice that items go missing in the background almost every time the camera revisits a spot.

The kitchen window looks out over the

conversations are placed. Even the landscape itself begins to disintegrate and disappear along with the house. The costuming should have been considered for an award as both Ruby and Seff slowly fade throughout the runtime.

The plot moves     like        a       worm, contracting and lengthening in a
nightmarish way. Little happens on screen, but there’s so much more of it beneath the surface. Dig into the mud and you’ll see the

They have tense, shallow conversations that show the growing distance between the couple.

A few of the conversations are repeated with only slight alterations. The first time this happens, it almost feels like an editing mistake. After that, it becomes hypnotic as you notice the differences.
The secret genius of the film is that

They journey from the mundane shots of their car as it arrives at the cabin to the final shot outside the window looking at a washed out, empty world, devoid of even the lake.

We watch as the character’s

We feel hollowed out as they begin to fall apart. It’s in these mundane moments that this film is truly unsettling. For me, I haven’t seen color the same since.

At the

is gone and Ruby stands alone, wearing grey and staring dead-eyed out the window to the blank landscape beyond. It’s a shame we haven’t

In a Pitch-Black Room is an unsettling not-quite-ghost story about how

you’ll

Ω

JC Passiglia writes under the penname Nor Amigone. They love ghost stories and dogs.

Lucy Mason is earning her BA in English at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She has been photographer for the Omaha Central Register (2018 – 2022), hired for events such as the Healthy for a Lifetime Conference (2019, 2021), and has placed at the Nebraska State Journalism competition (2022), and won first place at Skills USA Regional (2020). Lucy is the Creative Nonfiction Section editor for UNO’s 13th Floor Literary Magazine (2024).