Hardeep Giani’s short film is set in London, where desk jockey Barney (Zak Lee) is bored with his office work and stuck in an unhappy marriage to a shrewish and unfaithful woman. He pines for an ex-girlfriend Rose (Isla Lindsay) who was killed by a serial killer several years earlier and obsesses over an antique clock that was an inheritance gift from his father.
When his wife breaks the clock during a temper tantrum, Barney takes the clock to an antique store run by a mysterious Indian (Bhasker Patel). The storekeeper recognizes the clock’s potential and secretly sprinkles some mysterious powder into its mechanism as part of the repair. When Barney winds the clock, he finds himself transported back in time – to the day that Rose was killed.
This short feels like a contemporary British riff into Rod Serling territory, complete with a dramatic surprise twist climax. (Sadly, there is an overly optimistic denouement that seems to come out of nowhere and doesn’t quite cap the story correctly.) And despite a few too many views of London’s main tourist attractions, Giani’s production is crisp and handsome, and the lead actors offer a level of sincerity and intelligence that is often rare to locate in contemporary short films.
