If you tell anyone that your significant other has somehow been replaced by a demon who walks/talks/behaves similarly but not quite like the person; then chances are they’re not gonna believe you. Quite naturally, when Michelle tries to tell her friend cum neighbor, Kim, that her husband John is not quite the John she knows; Kim finds it hard to believe. She even jokingly brings up things like body snatching and all that; before showing genuine concern about Michelle’s well-being.
However, we, the audience, know for a fact that Michelle is telling the truth. Because director Sarah Young’s horror short Not Him begins with a scene as terrifying as Michelle waking up in the middle of the night and finding her husband on top of her. His eyes are pitch black, they couldn’t possibly be human eyes. Quite naturally, it can’t be the John she knows – the sweet, nice guy she married. So the next morning, she seeks help from Kim. And from their conversation, we can sense that this is not the first time Michelle is telling her friend about her husband not quite being himself. This has been going on for a while actually. Kim might be joking a bit but she’s actually worried about Michelle. When Kim asks if that whole ‘John’s eyes were fully dark’ thing happened in a dream, Michelle gives in and says it did. We know she’s doing this to reassure Kim but also because the whole thing is quite ludicrous.
If Not Him was a full length feature, I’m sure the director would have marinated the idea and set it up for a while before going into the confrontation. Since it is not, we pretty much see the first and second acts within the opening three-four minutes. The first act here is obviously the incident – Michelle getting startled by her demon husband – and the second is the dissection of it, i.e., her telling Kim all about it. And that’s enough for us to understand what’s really happening. That’s some genuinely good short film writing there and director Young (who’s the writer as well) deserves all the credit in the world for that. Not to mention, this allows Not Him to jump into the final act within five minutes of the whole thing starting. I know I’m talking about it a bit too much but I can’t help but laud director Young’s technical abilities here. Of course, her editor Kevin Deming deserves credit for that as well. So does cinematographer Andrew Whitlatch, who has been able to catch the somber mood of the story with his blue-tinted frames; and composer Luke Lotardo, who’s responsible for turning out just the right kind of background music. It’s important that we acknowledge all these people, who might make it big one day. I have always stressed upon the fact that short film making is not a walk in the park, if you’re really trying to make a mark. Given I have already established Not Him is a genuinely good horror short, I feel the need to praise the people who are behind it.
Of course, I have to talk about the performers here. Tori Ernst (who’s also one of the producers) as Michelle is really good, so is Katherine Chin as Kim and Ryan Nicholas Cooper as Kim’s husband Joe. I was reading the press material and found out Young, Ernst, Chin and Cooper were all alumni of the same film school and the director wrote the characters keeping her three friends in mind. Charlie McElveen, easily the best performer who plays the husband/demon, has come into the equation through an audition of course. If you’re a horror aficionado, then you’ve probably seen him in Paramount’s deliciously dark horror series Evil (which just had its untimely ending) and Gareth Edwards’ “Creator”. McElveen is fantastic here and I hope he gets more opportunities to show his skill. Director Young has also mentioned that McElveen has been a great person to work with, and for her it really matters that the guy who’s playing the antagonist is actually a good person in real life. The story of how Young conceived Not Him is not quite fascinating but it is as real as it can get. She actually had a dream that mirrored the entire first scene of the movie. She wrote that down, and from there on things just came along.
Alright, I’m going to address something now which I have been consciously avoiding. I can’t tell you what happens when Michelle confronts John about him being ‘someone else’ because I want you to find that out for yourself (and also this is not an explainer), as the director would want. But in case you watch the film and somehow miss the point, Not Him is not quite an episode of Fringe (that’s a show I obsess over by the way). It is about something else, and it’s hard not to get that the director is trying to do a social commentary on domestic violence – which is rotting the whole America (and the world). And by the look of it, she has successfully managed to pull it off. Young has even mentioned that she aims to raise awareness regarding the issue with her short; sort of what films like The Babadook or Barbarian did with mental illness. But since Young is also a genre movie fan, it was important for her to make something exciting. Needless to say, Not Him screams to become a full-length feature and I’m delighted to tell you that it is actually happening, as per what the director says. I just hope she repeats the same cast, or at least Charlie McElveen in the role of John.
