VESTIGE | Omeleto

A young boy discovers a strange fossil that holds the key to his father's disappearance.
VESTIGE is used with permission from Static Flow Productions. Learn more at https://staticflowproductions.com.
Lucas's father disappeared by the sea when he was younger, and Lucas is still haunted by the loss. He listens repeatedly to the cassette tapes where his father recorded his thoughts, and he revisits the places his father used to go.

One day, visiting a cave by the sea that his father once explored, Lucas comes across a strange fossil. He takes the fossil home, setting off a chain of eerie moments and clues -- one that might lead to solving the mystery of his father's disappearance.

Directed by Joe Simmons from a script co-written with Gudni Lindal Benediktsson, this atmospheric horror short is one boy's journey to unravel the mystery of a defining absence of his life. Lucas's father walked into the sea, and Lucas has been in his grandfather's care since. His life is a quiet and solitary one, captured in misty, beautifully bleak cinematography. These melancholic visuals also suit the seashore where Lucas likes to roam. It's where his father used to go, as revealed by the audio journals that Lucas listens to on old cassette tapes.

Lucas discovers a strange fossil in a cave by the ocean, it seems to unlock new dimensions of the mystery surrounding his father's disappearance. Strange things begin to happen that indicate his father may have been transmuted into some kind of supernatural presence, a possibility that Lucas can't help but hope for and pursue.

The hints and clues accumulate for both Lucas and the viewer, and though they're increasingly ominous, Lucas is driven for any insight into his father and the choices he made. Young actor Ben Hackett's sensitive, self-contained performance is resolutely restrained, hinting at the loneliness and emptiness that young Lucas feels in his parent's absence, despite his well-adjusted demeanor. This inner void within him responds to the tantalizing possibility of communing with his father in any way possible.

Visually stunning, poetic and then hair-raisingly eerie, VESTIGE ends with a remarkably imagined scene that is sinister, ethereal and achingly emotional all at once for Lucas. The film is true to the dictates of its horror genre in the end, but it resonates beyond fear and dread because of its darkly luminous images and its tender evocation of a bereft young child haunted by loss. Lucas's life is shaped by his father's absence, leaving a hole within himself. He will do anything to fill that hole, traveling to even the darkest corners for any hope of sensing his presence again.

Видео VESTIGE | Omeleto канала Omeleto