PopHorror Let's Get Scared
The Serpent’s Nest is a short film directed by Alice Maio Mackay (Tooth 4 Tooth 2020 – read our review here), and co-written by Alice Maio Mackay and Benjamin Pahl Robinson. It stars Jamila Main as Sophia, Felicia Tassone (Awoken) as Gen, Joe Romeo (Awoken) as Danny, and Dominique Booth (Boogeyman Pop) as Suzanne P. Carver.
Synopsis:
When Sophia, a non-binary teenager, moves to a new town, they aren’t counting on acceptance, and the last thing they expect to find is love. Rebellious and confident, Gen seems to be exactly what Sofia needs, but as they are drawn deeper and deeper into a world of punk, drugs and black magic, they will learn that bad love has a terrible cost: their life.
The Serpent’s Nest is a coming-of-age story that involves teenage angst and romance. Main and Tassone play the roles of Sophia and Gen in a believable way. They have excellent chemistry together onscreen, it really didn’t take long for me to be invested in their newfound relationship, and that says something, because I am a sucker for relationship-building in movies as long as they are done right. With the short amount of time we have with these characters, I was truly impressed with how attached I got.
With a runtime of roughly twenty six minutes, The Serpent’s Nest was an easy watch that had a deeper meaning to it then one might expect at first glance, especially tackling the topic of gender identity and the things that Sophia has to go through to feel accepted. It is done in such a way that feels natural and not too in your face.
The minor complaints I had with The Serpent’s Nest are that it was hard to tell exactly how much time has passed in the story. It starts off with Sophia and Gen first meeting after Sophia moves to the new town and then ends with them being in love. Granted, this could have been due to the runtime of the film. Which leads into my second and last issue, and that is the runtime itself. Mackay has done such a great job bringing the world of The Serpent’s Nest to life that I wanted to spend more time in it. I would honestly love to see this fleshed out into a full length feature film cause I feel there is more story that could be told.
My final thoughts are, if you get a chance I recommend you check out The Serpent’s Nest, it is well worth your time!
