Flip (2004)
Article 5624 by Dave Sindelar
Date: 1-21-2019
Directed by Kirk Demarais
Featuring Landen Knowlton, Harrison Knowlton, Jamey Clayberg
Country: USA
What it is: Slice of life short

A monster kid from the sixties named Flip is given a dollar by his grandma for his birthday, with the admonition to “Spend it wisely!” He fantasizes what might happen if he buys any of several different items from the novelty page in his favorite horror comic book.

The first thing you may notice about this short is that it looks like a pretty low-budget affair. However, it won’t take you long to realize that it doesn’t matter; the script is so clever and so perceptive that it wins you over. It does an excellent job of seeing the situation from the boy’s perspective, and it’s done almost entirely without dialogue; the only talking that occurs is during a movie-within-a-movie sequence, and the imagined “spend it wisely” admonition popping up sporadically – everything else is conveyed visually. The fantastic content occurs throughout; two of the items he considers buying (a werewolf mask and a u-control monster) are full of horror content, and the movie within a movie is a horror film. It’s also utterly charming to see the main character’s journey from hope to disappointment, only to have a coda illustrate how the nostalgia of a shared experience can change everything. This is a fine short, and highly recommended.