PopHorror Let's Get Scared
As someone who desperately wants to revisit the 1990’s and convince my parents not to give their eldest son a bowl cut before his first year of school, I’m just not ready to give up on the possibility of time travel. If there’s one thing to be expected about the time traveling process based on the history of film and television, however, it’s that there are bound to be complications with your journey. Mainline, the short film from writer/director Eric Kleifield, showcases a potential paradoxical issue when a bioengineer is faced with the consequences of his time travel serum.
Though Kleifield’s short is only 10-minutes in length, it presents an investing, and at times, tense, story. From the opening moments of the film, I found myself captivated by the questions that are posed, and especially by the central performance of Blaine Vedros as Jake, the bioengineer. While some of those aforementioned questions aren’t fully explored, Kleifield effectively strings us along by pitting his lofty aspirations against a contained setting, and Vedros’ makes the events immensely watchable with his dramatically hefty performance.
Vedros plays Jake as a man tormented by obsession and the consequences of such. The negative effects of that obsession are literally staring him in the face throughout the film, but he still cannot find it within himself to give up. There’s a particular scene that features Jake at the end of his mental rope, in tears, and Vedros masterfully manipulates our own feelings with his ability to sell the pain. He’s phenomenal.
Viewers who are frustrated by the notion of coming to your own conclusions about events in a film are sure to gripe about some of the open-ended elements that are presented in Mainline, but there’s no denying the talent of Eric Kleifield and Blaine Vedros. Time travel ain’t easy, but it sure is fascinating.
