STALLED | Omeleto
4,771,209
Published 2022-11-18
STALLED is used with permission from Matt Black. Learn more at weekend.video/.
Ruthlessly ambitious business executive Pete is on his way to an important meeting when he realizes he's running late. As he pops into the restroom, he's rude on the phone to his co-worker and he's short-tempered with the janitor, revealing cut-throat selfishness and entitlement.
When he's in the stall, he sees a strange message written on the toilet paper and then someone peeking into his stall. Investigating the sounds of a scuffle outside, he realizes he's been locked into the bathroom -- and realizes the person peeking into his stall was himself. And he can't escape... until he's unlocked to the temporal paradox he's found himself in. But doing that means confronting his worst enemy: himself.
Written and directed by Matt Black, this sci-fi short is essentially a puzzle operating on two levels: there's the straightening of twisted timelines as a man tries to escape the time loop he's found himself, which brings kinetic energy and suspense to the storytelling. But there's also an existential puzzle, as Pete must work with his past and future selves to figure it all out. But when you're an arrogant, selfish jerk, that process is a lot harder.
Shot with a lurid moodiness like a corporate thriller and scored with an anxious, dissonant electronic score, the film still finds a lot of fun and even insight in the set-up. Placing a time loop in a public restroom builds some quirkiness into the narrative from the beginning and contours the concept perfectly for the short format. And there's also some biting humor as Pete comes up against his own self, which he does again and again as he tries to figure out the paradox he's in but is hindered by his blowhard attitude.
Time traveling is a complicated idea and the fast pace and sharp dialogue lay it out quickly, but the mechanics don't have to be completely grasped to enjoy the film. Instead, the story smartly yokes the solving of the time travel puzzle to Pete's confrontation with himself. Actor Jacob Daniels' nimble performance as Pete proves to be the film's anchor through all the temporal madness, as his character slowly realizes that working with himself is the true nightmare. He sees the cost of his cut-throat, toxic attitude and treatment of others because the time loops force him to be the victim of it.
If Pete wants any chance to escape the temporal trap he's in, he's got to change his attitude fast -- or else risk being killed by his own desperate, cornered self. By the end of STALLED, he's a changed man, and that growth is hard-won. It's an eye-opening moment for Pete when the worst version of himself points a gun at himself and has no reservations about pulling the trigger. It's a riveting situation in a short full of such moments, but it also provokes some reflection on how we'd get along with ourselves at our worst, making for an unexpectedly thoughtful ending to a compelling wild ride of a film.
All Comments (21)
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So after escaping the time paradox he loses his job because he was late/quits because he wants to change his life. He becomes a janitor and grows old. One day he's cleaning the bathroom and sees his younger self walk in, realizing he is back in the paradox. He leaves himself a hint for how to escape, leaves the toilet paper on the counter, and walks out, leaving his younger self to his own devices. Genius writing.
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One actor, one room, one script. One masterpiece
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"53 missed calls from Christopher Nolan"
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This 20 minute video just felt like 3 hours of thinking
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imagine being late and then trying to explain this to your boss
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This is one of the reasons i avoid going to public restrooms
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the only film where the protagonist is also the side character and the antagonist at the same time, while also being background characters
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My favorite part of this was the fight scene where it's unclear why he's fighting himself, and then he enters and exits the stall in the middle of a fight, that was really well done and unique.
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Tossing his tie, jacket, and watch in the trash was him killing his future. On the phone in the beginning he said nobody was going to take that account because it was his future. Giving up that future is what got him out of the paradox.
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Respect to the camera man for avoiding being in mirror.
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Something I want to take note of. The name tag that the janitor wears says Janus. In Roman myth, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, frames, and endings. These themes are very much at play in this short, what with the time-traveling bathroom stalls that could be considered to be "gates." I have three possible interpretations for who the elderly janitor could be. 1. Janus the god himself, helping Pete become a better person via their domain. 2. A future version of Pete, representing a wiser and overall more peaceful self that he will eventually become. 3. Simply an unrelated elderly janitor, albeit one with an uncanny sense of wisdom regarding what will end up happening to Pete.
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Apparently each door had a different effect: 1st door: sends you to a different place in time (large time difference) 2nd door: it's only used once by survivor Pete at 7:06 3rd door: sends you to a different place in time (short time difference) 4th door: sends you back in the past Survivor Pete used the 1st door to escape bloody Pete at 16:42 and goes back to 14:16 and uses the 3rd door to quickly go back to future bloody Pete, he pushes him into the 1st door and sends him back to past bloody Pete exactly when he shoots the door. The only thing that's been left a mystery is when jacketless Pete from 7:06 came from. This implies that this is where the time paradox was first broken, in the original paradox he was supposed to repeat this dialogue and bloody Pete would enter the first stall, but since he refused that erased the point of origin from survivor Pete. Brilliant writing, very subtle detail.
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When you remember that's just one guy acting in an empty room it's mind blowing. Well done sir 👏
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What's funny to me, is that final survivor isn't the one we followed from the start, he is a remnant of a time line that shouldn't exist, a possibility, the possibility of a version of him that realizes he is a bad person, the only version of him that survived isn't connected by causality to the one that went in. Brilliant writing.
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This strangely ends up working by just being plain about the fact it shouldn't be working and it doesn't make sense and just roll with it. It's generally the attempt at explaining why time travel and paradoxes happen that ends up causing inconsistencies, and that doesn't happen here. The character at the end is just as confused as the one at the beginning, even his escape involves preparing the next loop and leaving with the assumption that that pocket of time will probably happen over and over eternally. Even having lived through it, knowing all the steps, he still leaves himself the same vague clue, maybe to keep the loop intact, maybe knowing the event changed him and he wants to leave the lesson for himself. Very well made.
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The world building within a bathroom was incredible regardless of it being a closed space you made it feel like an open world with more to it despite not actually changing locations but by including later and past versions of yourself as signs of progression and change truly amazing
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Absolute genius. 'Surrounded by Morons ' deserves an Oscar
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I like how the Janitors name is Janus, janus is roman god of gateways, door, transition - time and choices, So he himself played the time game with Pete
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moral of the story: don't mess with janitors because they might actually be time wizards
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One man, one set, and more entertaining than a lot of what Hollywood has put out in the last few years. Good job on this one.
