Review of the Short Film “Bear” (2011)
“Bear” (2011) is a short film directed by Nash Edgerton featuring him and the actress Teresa Palmer. The film’s length is 11 minutes, and the genre is dark comedy and drama.
The film is about how plans for a surprise birthday party can go wrong. This statement is an understatement because of the events in the movie (spoilers ahead). The film focuses on a relationship and it shows how the main character tries to surprise his girlfriend but it ends up being a tragedy.
The movie starts by showing Jack and his girlfriend Emily sleeping and suddenly the alarm goes off. She gets dressed while he stays in bed and neither of them speaks to each other, which is obviously making his girlfriend upset. Later we see Emily making herself peanut butter toast, which Jack takes from her and sits down to watch TV. She gets upset and grabs her bike to go for a ride. After this, Jack gets decorations from a box and chases after her in his car.
The next scene takes place in the woods and we see Jack’s girlfriend riding close to a cliff. Suddenly, a bear comes out, scaring her and causing her to fall off the cliff. Thankfully, Emily is fine, and the audience realizes there’s no bear, just Jack wearing a costume. He immediately apologizes to his girlfriend for what happened and checks to make sure how bad her injuries are. We also see the decorations he had set up to surprise her for her birthday.
After the surprise has gone terribly wrong, Jack tries to make Emily laugh and explains why he pretended to forget her special day. He makes her laugh by putting the costume bear’s head back on. Suddenly Jack gets shot by a man on top of the cliff who believed Jack was a real bear and we just see his blood splattering on his girlfriend. The worried man shouts to Emily and asks her if the bear is dead and the last shot is her crying while Jack falls on top of her. That’s it…. That’s how the film ends, making the audience shocked and leaving them with an abrupt ending.
Overall, I would give the movie a 5/10 because it’s not my type of movie, but I liked the twist ending and how they kept the audience in suspense throughout the movie. I don’t watch dark comedy that much, but I enjoyed how fast-paced the film is and the acting was good.
Honestly, I would have preferred more dialogue between the characters or maybe Jack explaining why he dressed as a bear to surprise her (not the best idea, especially while being close to a cliff). However, I understand it’s a short film, so it limited them when developing the story line. The man didn’t shoot a bear and the audience should have seen his reaction. I believe adding the quote about Jack going too far (a statement said by his ex) at the beginning of the movie was important for the audience to get a glimpse of his character. I also enjoyed the variety of settings, such as the mountains and the streets they showed throughout the film.
“Bear” (2011) is a drama/comedy short film about how stupid as humans we can be sometimes. I think for people who enjoy dark comedy and twist endings it can be a brilliant film and it’s something different that audiences hadn’t seen before.
