CINEMA
IVI ELV (2024)
"A man regains consciousness somewhere unknown and claustrophobic. Dazed and confused, he begins to wander its dark corridors, but a series of visions will force him to deal with a far worse reality."
OUR MOVIE REVIEW:
A Haunting Metamorphosis of Consciousness
Minor Flash Warning
The horror genre has an exquisite ability to reach across time and language to still deliver a message. Horror shorts do not have the luxury that feature-length films have of spending a lot of time with their audience, and, therefore, shorts must make that connection to the viewer quickly, like a dagger strike to the midsection. IVI ELV, a new Italian horror short, efficiently gets to the point.
The rough translation from the Italian title IVI ELV is "The Evil." The 11-minute short opens with a man waking up among a pile of maggots inside an unknown dark tunnel. This man is lost and full of fear. It is inexplicable what he is doing there, but he is terrified; his eyes are sunken with dread. Director Luigi Scarpa drags the man through the corridors until we also become intimate with the man's fear.
The dark cinematography that splashes across this man's journey into the labyrinth is superb. There are flashbacks, with bountiful green colors from a forest and drone footage of Italian landscapes forgotten by time. But the man recalls the recollection of violence and evil that mars the beauty. It may be anyone's guess what Scarpa and his crew were trying to suggest with the message of IVI ELV. The power of evil? The price of evil? What is the fate of those who cross the demarcation line between good and truth?
IVI ELV is over as soon as it begins and is pretty effective for its run time. This short film will mostly resonate with horror fans, which, given its aesthetic, creepiness, and tone, is a fair bar to clear.