Drive Safe is a short horror film by Cal Thomson with Katie Burgess taking the leading role as Gemma.

 

Gemma leaves her friends house late at night and begins to take a lonely drive home. However, unbeknown to her an evil spirit has a different plan. Drive Safe has a running time that is just shy of 4 minutes, but the trick is not to be duped into thinking that something so short will have no impact. It can be harder to tell a story and generate emotions of fear and dread over a small amount of time, as everything has to be concise, neat and perfectly formed.  If you are unsure about this, then you need to check out CryptTV ‘One minute Horror’.

 

There is a neat little moment in the film where the music creates a feeling of an apparent threat but then the analytical minds questions whether what we thought we witnessed was real. I really enjoyed that because it creates paranoia, which is a vital aspect in any horror film.

 

This is Thomsons’ first short film, which he has both written and directed. By trade he is a freelance camera operator and editor, having worked in films, commercials and music videos. It’s clear that his past experience has helped him enormously in the making of this as he has an understanding of direction.

 

There is a very little to be criticise in Drive Safe as it is a well-executed short. It grabs the viewers’ attention from the moment Gemma says goodbye to her friend. However, now that Thomson has branched out into making his own films, it would be interesting to see whether or not he would have the stamina to create a much longer short.