Jason Sondhi

Night Breakers is a near-perfect horror proof-of-concept short. After watching it for the first time at SXSW 2022, I told the S/W team that it was the best pure example of its type in ages – suspenseful and thrilling, of course, but also possessing a recognizable conceit, which meant easily understood mechanics along with clear-cut character motivations and stakes. At 17-minutes, it’s long for a proof, but there is little fat, and viewers should strap in for a scary and propulsive journey through the dark tunnels underneath the city of La Luz.

La Luz? I haven’t heard of that city, where’s that? We’re in fantasy territory, and, perfectly for a proof-of-concept, the writer/director team of Gabriel Campoy and Guillem Lafoz dole out exposition in a steady intravenous drip rather than a dump, whetting audience curiosity, but not bogging things down. Indeed, the first three minutes are a masterfully concise example of world-building, effectively establishing the threat.

The collapse of society due to shadows sets up a post-apocalyptic “Western”.

A group travels dark tunnels adorned in string lights and connected by cable. Their gear wards off ”shadows” – omnipresent mystical creatures that have collapsed modern society. The only protection is to be constantly awash in light, but this makes travel a challenge, and the minute your battery goes out or a wire gets snipped, it’s lights out for you. In those first three minutes, we see the coordination necessary to make the group’s journey work and, critically, we see that coordination fail. I dare you not to get hooked immediately.

In its quieter moments, it is clear that Campoy and Lafoz envision their post-apocalypse as a sort of Western, with La Luz representing civilization’s outpost, but everything outside of its protection as a lawless place where shadows can be less of a concern than the other humans around you. Our featured group is unfamiliar with each other – strangers brought together as clients of a “coyote” to smuggle them into the city, and the 17-min runtime allows for quick hits of concise characterization amongst our diverse crew that is archetypal, but surprisingly effective.

The coyote, ruthless by necessity, but still decent; a white woman, she shows concern and attempts to coordinate consensus in the group; a bespectacled man whom I cannot help but think of as “Spanish John Oliver,” is destined to be the antagonist, not out of malice, but from cowardice. Finally, our protagonist, an Asian woman kept apart from the group by not speaking, but who honors fallen companions with mysterious rituals and lights a match in their remembrance.

Chacha Huang as the protagonist, “Mei”.

Much of this will sound familiar, but I would argue that a perfect proof-of-concept is not a work one would characterize as wholly original. A proof is a pitch, and by design meant to evoke references – the classic elevator game of “x film meets y story”. Night Breakers orients itself around the single most primal element of fear – fear of the dark – and possesses more than a few recognizable elements, so I will not suggest that the short will ultimately surprise you in concept or plot. What it excels at is the logic with which it assembles its pieces, how purely it distills them, and how sweet the execution is. I like the production design. I like its horror beats. I like the characters. Night Breakers was not a big production, but looks like a million bucks, rather than a three-day shoot its directors jokingly describe as being “inside a single 160-foot tunnel built beneath a set of major sound stages we couldn’t afford to rent.”

Naturally, Campoy and Lafoz will need more up their sleeves if their ambition of turning Night Breakers into a feature film is to be met. But, the Night Breakers short receives top marks from me for pure enjoyment, and it successfully lays the foundation for future stories to be built upon. I told Campy and Lafoz how impressed I was with their work at that Austin screening three years ago, and though we’ve had to wait a bit as the film underwent feature development (news to share soon?), we’re excited and proud to present to you the film’s online premiere.