La Cabina

Every once in a blue moon, I come across a fickle little oddity. It might reside in a Japanese pinku film or a Russian surrealists vision. This time, it took the disguise of a Television produced Spanish short. Something of a spurious episode of The Twilight Zone; La Cabina is a whole new nightmare for a mind washed audience. No wear and tear on this mean short. This film was created for one thing and one thing only - a campaign of relentless fear to rip through paranoid peoples minds.



Plot line: A man gets trapped in a telephone booth. Onlookers gather at the hilarity of the situation. Things escalate quickly when the man realizes that something is at work that happens to be unexplainable. The tension scintillates at a fierce exponential rate and the clock doesn't stop ticking. What could have been a mundane character, due to the lack of intimacy with the camera, is transformed into one that bears a more sympathetic persona of which is forced to see the world, albeit confined to a tight, claustrophobic space.



After viewing this short without subtitles, I fear that I may have missed something consequential to our characters outcome or perhaps even a greater understanding at the inanimate menace at large. Great ties seem to have been used to forge the almost similar bizarro novel from auteur Carlton Mellick III entitled The Menstruating Mall, in which several people get trapped inside of a mall and cannot leave for some particular reason that is later revealed.




The humans who are featured - other than our forlorn protagonist - are depicted as biased and cruel monster's dedicated to humiliating each others. Among these spectators is where mankind's horrific natures bleed through like wine to cotton. Lurching men steal food from atop a merchant's head. Services are offered to the crowd as this horrible debacle is morphed into a sideshow of freaks staring at what they believe is the main attraction, but alas, the pot is calling the kettle black.



Strictly horrifying and mesmerizing, these 35 minutes have left me marked. I never will stare at a telephone booth with a proud feeling of societal partnership. This film succeeded in making me paranoid at even the most common form of community services. Never again will I doubt a TV production for being "unoriginal" or "a waste of monetary resources", and never again will I be plagued by so much fear. The Emmy speaks for itself.

-mAQ