Olumense’s Jingles

All Austin wanted to do today was to visit a job office so that he could try to find work in order to support himself and his daughter. Instead he finds himself kidnapped for some nefarious, unknown purpose and now must figure out a way to escape the jingles of his potential “employer” if he wants to have any hope of making it out of his predicament alive.

So here we have another short film by Olumense Omonjahio, the same director who gave us the Koi Koi short, except this one ends up being over twice as long as that film, clocking in at around 10 minutes. That seems to be just enough time to add in some much appreciated background exposition that was missing from the previous film.

Um…. Is this supposed to be symbolic of something?

Of course, this is still a short film, and at only 10-minutes we still don’t receive enough information to create a fully fleshed out picture. For instance, we don’t know exact locations and we never learn the kidnapper’s motivations for kidnapping Austin, or how they managed to get their subduing mechanism, the “jingles”, to work against him. However, we’re still given more than enough to know that Austin is in serious trouble and he needs to get out of it, and the film doesn’t have to resort to a narrator or a text screen to convey any of it.

Though there is a phone call. But I’ll accept that.

Beyond that, the film is competently made. Everything looks good from a visual standpoint, with Olumense managing to create a very compelling and creepy atmosphere with very limited funds. Even the sound is improved from the previous short, including some disturbing, but melodic humming on the part of the villain. And the dialogue has also improved, with the adult actors clearly enunciating their lines so that I didn’t have any trouble figuring out what they were saying this time around. My only complaint is that the concept of the “jingles” and even Austin’s escape is clearly a reference to the film Get Out, though I did appreciate that the ending was different enough so as not to be predictable.

But homage or not, Jingles ends up being an enjoyable enough little short. I would have liked a little explanation on the parts of the villains, but as the film stands it still works perfectly well without it. Hell, it’s probably more disturbing that way. I’m just being demanding. So if you like creepy shorts, feel free to give Jingles a try.

Jingles is available to watch on Amazon Prime.

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