She Loves Me is a 2015 American short-film, directed by Andrew Michalski and starring Matthew Bannister and Maria Nicole Held. Now doing the rounds on the festival circuit, the film won best short horror film at the Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival.
On a summer’s eve, young sweethearts, Ben and Kat, settle upon a daisy-strewn locale, full of young love, foolish notions and, no doubt, a selection of savoury snacks. Ben is full of bashful good intentions and clumsy small-talk, whilst Kat is equally daffy, as I suspect you must be to partake of Scotch eggs and wine alfresco at midnight. When Ben professes his feelings via the age-old method of plucking one of the profligate daisies and yanking off the petals one-by-one to the refrain of, “she loves me, she loves me not…”, all goes westwards when he takes exception to her insolence, prompting a slightly disproportionate machete attack. As the final five minutes play out, it becomes apparent that both of them would have been wise to take closer heed to the sign warning, “don’t pick the daisies”…
Firstly, a few thoughts on the nature of short films. Several years ago they were almost solely the tinkerings of film school students, filling their exam requirements or escaping them by filming exactly what they weren’t supposed to. Now, more often than not, they are the only way a new film-maker can get their work seen by both curious audiences and potential distributors, a necessary stepping-stone to ‘the real thing’. The counter balance to this is that this suits the horror genre very well – for the audience it allows for snappy shocks without unnecessary baggage; for the creators it gives the opportunity to both gauge audience reaction or even think better of a full-length development. With the horror film festival circuit booming in both Europe and the US, the shorts which now fulfil an important part of the offering, often serve to dish up surprises in the same way that support bands have the occasional temerity to blow the main act off the stage. Short-films are the only time it is appropriate for someone to write, direct, produce, make the tea etc – elsewhere it is the tell-tale sign of blinkered claptrap.
She Loves Me, a 15-minute film which quickly nails its colours to the mast with some obviously exaggerated performances, takes the bull by the horns and goes for the black-humour jugular, a dangerous move at the best of times. It’s testament to the actors and the director that no-one falls on their metaphorical face, more-so that the generic lunatic pitch is shuffled aside with equal aplomb. With a Carry On slug of wit, She Loves Me is clever enough to understand what it sets out to pastiche, whilst still having enough in its guts to change direction successfully and give hope that the promise is given the opportunity to grow. Writer, producer and director, Andrew Michalski explains the film’s genesis:
“I wrote the very first draft back in 1998. My inspiration for writing it came to me from a nightmare I had. It was actually spring time when it happened and I was suffering with allergies from the pollen in the air. So, I think that I had some subconscious ill feelings towards daisies at the time.
It was originally a short story about a murder investigation with a lot of different characters in it: policemen, two detectives, a waitress, umpteen women and a murderer. It evolved into a very complicated feature-length script. I should tell you, that originally, the full title was called SHE LOVES ME NOT. However, I didn’t have the budget to make the feature, so I figured I’d develop a short scene and film it first. I went back to the original script with my partner and he and I thought there was too much going on at first. So it was back to the drawing board”
“When retooling the SHE LOVES ME NOT script, we decided to have just 2 characters in it – a man (Ben) and a woman (Kat).
It was my partner’s idea to have them on a date and make it a midnight picnic, from there, I wrote the script. I struggled with what to call the short. At first, we toyed with titles like, MIDNIGHT PICNIC. And then one day I woke from a nap and shouted out the title SHE LOVES ME. I felt it would be great to first shoot a short called SHE LOVES ME and peak people’s interest in it and then have a sequel or continuation for it called SHE LOVES ME NOT”.
