The Voice of the Lion opens with a man making a phone to someone we soon learn is a priest. The caller is clearly distressed, tired and frightened – with pentagrams and candles all over the floor. Now on a FaceTime call with the priest, the man's arms begin to burn with symbols and the priest quickly turns to the man's young daughter to help with an over-the-phone exorcism.
This short film will feel reasonably familiar because essentially it is a found-footage horror movie that uses the first-person perspective and hand-held cinematography as one of the tools to draw the viewer in. In this case it is not so much footage as a live feed since the film was made using a mobile phone. The narrative device is good and although some of the plotting doesn't totally scan, it does grab you. The hand-held approach is perhaps a bit overdone and it would have been good to have a bit more stability to the camera view, but for key moments it does so. Make-up and atmosphere are well presented so the horror is visually evident but it does also feel tense, with a very good build throughout. The conclusion is sudden and satisfying and I particularly enjoyed the dark tone to the ending while a much more jovial song played.
It does feel a little derivative in some ways, but it is short and it does work for what it wants to do, which is really the key thing.
This short film will feel reasonably familiar because essentially it is a found-footage horror movie that uses the first-person perspective and hand-held cinematography as one of the tools to draw the viewer in. In this case it is not so much footage as a live feed since the film was made using a mobile phone. The narrative device is good and although some of the plotting doesn't totally scan, it does grab you. The hand-held approach is perhaps a bit overdone and it would have been good to have a bit more stability to the camera view, but for key moments it does so. Make-up and atmosphere are well presented so the horror is visually evident but it does also feel tense, with a very good build throughout. The conclusion is sudden and satisfying and I particularly enjoyed the dark tone to the ending while a much more jovial song played.
It does feel a little derivative in some ways, but it is short and it does work for what it wants to do, which is really the key thing.
