A detestable social media ‘influencer’ and his friends on a night out get their just deserts in this short from writer/director Alex Kahuam, who impressed us with his feature Forgiveness, which screened at FrightFest in 2021.

After live-streaming himself mocking and being generally horrible to a homeless person (played by co-writer Daniel Kuhlman), Jake (Layne Herrin) and his crew find themselves tied up in a basement by Ian (Ted Raimi), who is particularly appalled at their behaviour. He tells them that there are two rules: no screaming and no begging. When one of them breaks the second of these rules, he’s forced to meter out severe punishment. The fate of the others could even be worse…

Cramming plenty of build-up in ten minutes, Kahuam has made Red Light into a fantastic teaser for a feature-length version. This short is taken from the script of the full-length version and is the reason Raimi got on board. He’s suitably sinister as the measured, assured antagonist, but the younger cast is decent too even if there’s so little time for them to make their presence felt. The influencer culture has been the butt of several films over the past few years, and it’ll certainly be interesting to see how and if this side of the story is developed, but from what we have here, Herrin’s Jake is the sort of arsehole that we see all the time on Instagram and as far as we’re concerned, he deserves everything he gets.

Red Light is wonderfully shot, with moody colours and fluid, involving cinematography from Nick Matthews. There’s a palpable atmosphere of dread, but a relatable philosophy behind the actions of Raimi’s Ian, who isn’t depicted as an out-and-out monster. We can’t wait to see this story expanded into a feature.