In “Hope,” what starts out as film noir, turns into a “Twilight Zone” episode and ultimately ends up in flashy supernatural television series (“Millennium”, “The X Files”) territory. Hey, that’s not bad; I said flashy, right?
A woman meets a mysterious Mr. Roth in a diner. She holds before her, in her trembling hands, a picture of a little girl who has gone missing. She begs Mr. Roth to find and return the girl safely to her parents. After a bit of snooping around, Mr. Roth returns to the desperate woman, claiming that there’s no way that the child can be saved. But the woman is insistent on finding out what Mr. Roth knows, so he shows her. This is where we find out that Roth is some sort of demon as he takes the woman through Hell itself in order to find out what happened to the missing girl.
“Hope” looks incredible. It’s jam-packed with digital effects eye candy and it totally works for this short film on a budget that takes its viewers on a journey through Hell. The one thing that bugged me, and it’s really small bullshit, is that I couldn’t get over that fact that I felt I was watching a pitch to FOX for a new supernatural television series. But hey, maybe this was the intent. And if so, more power to the filmmakers. You guys rule!
