If you stare at the sun too long, you may go blind. If you dare face your future however, you may pay an even greater price. Such is the premise of Toby Wilkins’s “Staring at the Sun,” a taut thriller with a shocking twist. Clay is a typical yuppie-type who, upon fearing for his job, visits a local fortune-teller known cryptically as The Gypsy. After drinking a drop of Clay’s blood, the sickly looking psychic immediately goes into a violent spasm. Clay demands to know what he saw, but his handler urges him to leave at once. Completely paranoid and freaked out about what can only be an unwelcome fate, Clay breaks into The Gypsy’s home, where he inadvertently precipitates his worst fears. “Staring at the Sun” is so absorbing and consistently unsettling that my only complaint would be its paltry running time. It’s a great short, but would be an even better feature.
