Mania Review

Mania is a 2019 short film written and directed by Nate Reynolds.

A film that has some solid acting and moments in it but still comes with the flaws that plague many an early filmmakers’ work, Mania comes with some mixed results.

The two best bits of this short film come down to the character development and the acting, at least in the first half of the piece. We get some good depth and the acting gets the job done to immerse in things.

It is more so in the second act where things start to fall apart, relying on some over the top moments mixed with some less than stellar production quality. It is in these scenes where we see things like cinematography take a downward turn and the more believable acting.

However, it must be noted that trying to keep an ending like the one we are presented with on level ground is a colossal task even for films with triple the budget, something like this would with union actors. It is just hard to pull off convincingly, so there is a level of credit that must be handed out for the attempt, nonetheless.

When things work though, they work well and despite some of the overall issues (most notably in the sound department) it doesn’t detract with where things are going in the film. This is what one could call a stepping stone project. A piece where you can learn a lot about not just your craft but how you want to continue to tell stories as you move into other productions.

Overall, Mania is not a bad short film. It is just held back by technical limitations and some hard to bottle up story beats. With a little more subtlety and larger crew, this is one that has potential to be a better viewing, but as it stands right now, it is just held back by its own ambition.

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Cheers!

Daniel Hess

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