Featured Short: All Eyes Peeled on "The Procedure"
“A man is kidnapped and forced to endure a strange experiment.” Kidnapping? Strange experiment? Sound enticing? Well, I’m sitting here staring at my computer screen, thinking about where to begin on this review of “The Procedure”. Sure, there are thousands upon thousands of adjectives in the dictionary. A thesaurus can also come in handy quite often. And yet, I can’t find that one perfect, all-encompassing word to describe filmmaker Calvin Lee Reeder’s…how can I put it?…insane, genius, disgusting, fascinating, peculiar, hilarious, bizarre, curious and well, extremely polarizing, description-defying short film, “The Procedure”. Winner of this year’s Short Film Jury Award for U.S. Fiction at Sundance Film Festival, this oddball little short exists in a filmic world all its own, employing a kinda genreless plot of proportions beyond epic. An official Indie Street Film Festival selection this past summer, a few “butts” may have gotten up from their seats during the screening. Do I blame them? In some cases, no. But did they miss out? Absolutely. Isn’t that the challenge (and half the fun) of challenging your audience? Make them squirm, laugh, feel disgusted - just make them feel something and have them remember that feeling for some time after the credits roll. That’s what the genius of “The Procedure” offers. ISFF’s own Artistic Director, Jay Webb, described the film as “one of the craziest, funniest, awesomest, sickest, can't stop laughingest films of the year“. If that doesn’t sum it all up, I don’t quite know what will. It’s like that one friend we all have - you can’t take them anywhere but you know, in the end, they will always be the life of the party in their own weird little way. Love to hate, hate to love. We could sit here all day trying to wrap our minds around the on-screen procedure that is featured within “The Procedure”, but you know what? We’ll stop here. Best to go in blindly on this one, guys. Get ready to take your usual film tastes on one heck of a visual adventure. At just under 4 mins long, what could possibly go wrong?! Watch the recent Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere “The Procedure” NOW!