Chase, In Prose

"It's simple - keep it dark, keep it intense"

I was recently invited onto a panel of voters for a New York-based film festival called Beneath the Earth, the primary point being to watch and review a selection of seven short films. Chase, in Prose is one of these films, and if you want to watch it just click on the link I provided for 'Beneath the Earth' and check it out.

The premise of Chase, in Prose, from the website:

Having checked in to the Imperial Hotel in Prague to focus on his writing, Adrian Chase is merely days from finishing his darkest thriller to date. Events soon take a turn however, when Chase is charmed by a member of the hotel staff. No longer motivated by his depression, the fictional characters in his novel adopt a new lighthearted disposition as he writes. This is not the first time this has happened; a fact well known to Chase's agent. In order to save the book, and more importantly secure sales, the agent must subversively intervene on the blossoming romance and restore his client's prolific gloom.

Bryan Jones (the director and writer of this intense little film) has a background in special effects work, and he isn't shy about his disparagement when it comes to the films he's worked on (Transformers II, Fast Five), so I think I'm excused if I took his positive self-appraisal to heart and came to the end of his short film feeling a little disappointed. The idea of an author's work reflecting and being shaped by agents who have nothing to do with the creative process was nice, and I can appreciate the metafictional slant this might have in relation to what Jones wants to say in his short, but my expectations were raised a little too highly by the way he talks himself up (see the "director's statement'" that accompanies the film on the Beneath Earth website). I got to the end of the film and was like, is that it? His criticism of Michael Bay seemed a little premature.

I liked the way it looked... it had an earthy, natural look that didn't seem overproduced or low budget. Some of the acting felt a little amateurish to me at times though, and the to-and-fro of two characters talking to each other (with camera angles switching back and forth to show each one speaking in turn) got tedious pretty quickly. The interwoven plots were quite accomplished, especially in light of the short amount of time Jones uses to get these ideas across, but overall the noir-ish qualities didn't really sell it for me and I just didn't find it very interesting. It's not a bad film, but it didn't completely rock my world either.

DIRECTOR: Bryan Jones
WRITER/SOURCE: Bryan Jones
KEY ACTORS: Byron Asher, Peter Hosking, Marie Bella, Laura Baranik

RELATED TEXTS
- Bryan Jones has also directed two other short films, Epiphany Inc. and The Peril of Milton Wintry.