REVIEW: Factory Farmed (2008)

A new feature I decided to do was a series of micro reviews for notable short films produced by fledgling directors. Just about everybody writes about the latest episode of Doctor Who or Red Dwarf, but I don’t see too many taking up the “indie” mantle. Some of my favorite science fiction directors began with groundbreaking shorts under their belts. Neil Blomkamp, for instance, created a series of amazing shorts that eventually got him a Hollywood deal.

Today we are going to be looking at a short called Factory Farmed directed by Gareth Edwards. Edwards gained a fair amount of fame a number of years ago when he released a film called Monsters, a film that eventually led to his name being placed on the newest Godzilla film due out in 2014. Factory Farmed was created in 2008 as an entry in the “The SCI FI LONDON 48 HOUR FILM CHALLENGE 2008”, a challenge that gives crews a prop, a single line of dialog, and two days to produce a film.

Factory Farmed is a minimalist affair that is both haunting and perplexing. The sombre tone of the film owes a lot to its solid film score that fills every moment with dark pessimistic tones. We aren’t given much to go on plot-wise and there is only a few lines of dialog towards the end of the film. What we do get is the sense of hopelessness and despair of a man on the brink of mankind’s ruin. There has been some sort of catastrophe involving humans and a clone sub-class. We are mostly shown the plot through flashbacks of a hospital from the viewpoint of a small child. In the present, our protagonist wanders the wasteland looking for anyone else alive. He doesn’t want to save them, meet them, help them or any other cliché. He wants to….well….you should watch the film.

Seeing this short means that I need to get around to finally watching Monsters in order to get pumped up for Godzilla. Being a big fan of “kaiju movies” (Japanese monster films), and seeing this short makes me really excited. Here’s hoping that they take the franchise back to it’s roots, when it wasn’t all about flash and had substance. If this is any indication, the franchise is in good hands.

Here is the film, Enjoy!