When is it personal alone time, and when is it a false sense of security? How far would you go to keep the world out for safety’s sake? In writer/director Chris Levine’s horror short Withdrawn, one man takes “Do Not Disturb” to the extreme, and he isn’t sure the world he’s shutting out is even real.
Alan (Chris Levine) has locked himself in his childhood bedroom, and he isn’t coming out. A woman’s voice calls through the door, telling him she knows he’s in there and that hiding is useless. Just before he can open the door, he is jolted awake. Then we’re back in reality. He has barricaded the door with whatever he could drag from around the room, turning the place into a one-man bunker. He pees in a bottle and poops in a bucket, then bags it all up and lowers it out the window.
A bloody hand smears down a door in a dark bedroom in Withdrawn.
“He has barricaded the door with whatever he could drag from around the room, turning the place into a one-man bunker.”
But Alan isn’t exactly alone. On the other side of the wall are his parents, John (Devin Reeve) and Betsy (Holden Ciel Sawyer). John is fed up with a son who won’t leave his room. Then the voice comes back. This time, it says there’s been an accident, and someone is crying somewhere outside the door. Now Alan is stuck between the safety of four walls and whatever tragedy is on the other side. But is this reality?
With his horror short, the writer/director/star takes a different approach. Rather than relying on cheap jump scares, Levine builds his scares from tension. What we don’t see freezes us in place, and the story keeps tightening the screws until it climaxes at the end. Lighting, sound design, and mystery build that pressure.
Levine centers his story on self-imposed isolation. Safety lies in a room with locks and barricades. Whatever evil is outside can’t come in… but what happens when the voices tempt you to step out into reality?
For screening information, visit the Withdrawn official website.
"…Whatever evil is outside can’t come in…"
