Good direction, good acting, but there was only enough story here for half an hour to 45 minutes. This must be why it is so slow and repetitive, almost every line is delivered after a long pause which is meant to convey some kind of simmering tension in the group? I guess? But it makes it just monotonous. And what tension there is is barely explored and revolves mainly around Evan hooking up with Max's ex. The fact that she is Max's ex is only revealed about 2/3s into the film - a long road to a very standard plot point, which has zero to do with the main plot anyway. Towards the beginning, as Evan and Zoe share an awkward hot tub, Evan asks her to fill him in on the "group dynamic." I was already screaming "None! There is no group dynamic!" They spend vast amounts of time drinking and doing drugs, but none of them ever seem drunk, on drugs or hungover. It's like the director tried to sanitise student behaviour in the weirdest way possible.
There is hardly any investment in the mythology behind "Hisji" - (not apparently, anything to do with local legend, but something Evan randomly gets off the internet) so there is no section where they try to reckon with it, figure out how to defeat it. This means all of the characters are totally passive - constantly reacting to whatever is thrown at them. I actually like the idea of the Hisji, but the script was woefully underdeveloped and in the end it was just a very long short film.
There is hardly any investment in the mythology behind "Hisji" - (not apparently, anything to do with local legend, but something Evan randomly gets off the internet) so there is no section where they try to reckon with it, figure out how to defeat it. This means all of the characters are totally passive - constantly reacting to whatever is thrown at them. I actually like the idea of the Hisji, but the script was woefully underdeveloped and in the end it was just a very long short film.
