SCAM | Omeleto скачать в хорошем качестве

SCAM | Omeleto

A scammer makes a call. SCAM is used with permission from Julie Sharbutt. Learn more at   / scam_short_film  . Stef is an enterprising phone scammer adept at calling targets and finding a way to play on their emotions. She uses various feelings, voices and characters to get the credit card numbers and PINs she wants as she pretends to be a long-lost relative, pleading for help. But late one night, Stef decides to make one more call before the end of the day. But she does not anticipate the target being more knowing than she thought, as a battle of wits emerges that unravels into an unnerving psychological game. Directed and written by Julie Sharbutt, who also plays Stef, this short horror-comedy is an unexpected stand-off between a woman who makes her living outfoxing unwitting targets and one such target that proves to be unexpectedly powerful. The set-up of the narrative and world is simple: just Stef in a room with some papers and a phone, and then an off-screen caller whom we never really see. But the sparseness of the narrative scope brings the sharply focused writing and performances to the fore. Shot with an unobtrusive simplicity in the camera and darkness in the colors and lighting, the storytelling finds humor in the lengths to which Stef will go to scam her targets, which include ridiculous lies and stories that fool her often elderly marks. Bouncing from one call to another, we're privy to the outlandishness of Stef's scams, but as they accumulate, we also become aware of Stef's unspoken assumptions about the people she's targeting. They're likely elderly, and perhaps so lonely that they'll believe Stef is a distant family member and respond to her pleas for monetary help. As an actor, Sharbutt's performance is almost baroque in how extravagant its emotions and inventions are, and some of the scenarios she creates are outlandish. But when she reaches her final call for the night, she gets an altogether different kind of caller. Though we see only a glimpse of the woman's mouth, we register the power and toughness in her voice, as well as the curl of amusement at the corner of her lips when she listens to Stef's lies and fabrications. Stef, however, does not realize who she's dealing with, and as she tries to perpetrate her scam, she finds herself in a kind of mind game with the caller on the other end of the line. What unfurls in a verbal jostling for dominance, using the gambits of unpredictability and fear to unnerve Stef. It leads the darkly ironic SCAM to its final sinister movement, and while we never definitively learn who is on the other end of the line, the film does reveal itself as a kind of modern morality play -- and a warning of the perils of underestimating who you're dealing with.