The Other You Short Film Posits How Dark Matter Would Fare As A Human

By Nick Venable | Published

This article is more than 2 years old

For their short film The Other You, IntoxyFilms worked with a narrow definition of dark matter in order to develop its story to the fullest, which admittedly isn’t all that much. But for a short film, one shouldn’t expect that much more. In this case, dark matter refers to matter “characterized by its total lack of interaction with visible (ordinary) matter,” and this allows for a woman — in this case, choreographer Edit Dekany — to be taken over by a being made entirely of dark matter. Slapstick comedy ensues.

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Well, not really. The Other You doesn’t work so much as a comedy as it does like watching someone work with a piece of technology for the first time. The woman wakes up with a vague recollection of how her daily life is supposed to go, from morning stretches to breakfast to heading into the outside world, only her methods of going about these things are entirely left of center. I have nothing inherently wrong against trying to take a bite out of a wall or understanding a tree by rubbing one’s face against it, but when you bring mayonnaise to the breakfast table, you’re asking to be escorted out by a loud scream.

Created for the Sci-Fi-London 48hr Film Challenge 2012, The Other You is being showcased by Warwick Davis’ Multiverse YouTube channel, which is a proper enough setting. The Multiverse has a knack for hosting half-hearted short films with really solid concepts, and this is no exception. As an exercise in thinking about how strange life on Earth is for an outsider, it’s fine, but without a deeper meaning, it’s just a series of silly moments. I don’t think we’ll see it getting expanded into a feature film anytime soon. And if we gain nothing else from this, at least we now know that dark matter has a European accent.