Ride Baby Ride is a mean horror short that finds a great balance in inflicting sharp inhales from the audience. Sofie Somoroff has conjured up a fantastic short that affects you.
A young mechanic gets the chance to fix up a 1978 Camaro, but her dream care soon becomes her worst nightmare.
A short and horrifically sweet seven minutes, Ride Baby Ride goes hell for leather in scaring its audience with some suitably great gore, but most importantly, buckets of tension as we watch on to what this old Camaro could possibly do next to its victim. Films, where a car is alive, have been on trend over the past couple of years with some hit or miss in their effectiveness; here in Ride Baby Ride, it falls quickly into the hit category.
Sofie Somoroff knows what to show and what to keep from the audience as we see our mechanic fight for her life. She gets her audience wincing at all the right moments but also doesn’t overdo it with her violence. Ride Baby Ride could easily just keep going with what it does show you, but at times, what it doesn’t show you have your mind going a million miles a minute in wonder.
With her clever filmmaking, and even if her film wasn’t a short film, you sense that she has the skillset as a filmmaker to make the absolute right choices in her films. With how well done Ride Baby Ride is, you will immediately gravitate to her other works. She is most certainly a filmmaker we need to keep an eye on, as there is considerable talent there.
Celina Bernstein is all action and provides us with some fantastic facial reactions as she battles to stay alive against the red vehicle. You feel her fear and panic as her evening worsens and her adrenaline kicks in when, somehow, her ordeal becomes even more horrifying. What makes her performance work so well is that despite being obviously scared, she also wants this surreal moment to be her last. She is a fighter and will do whatever she can to ensure she survives. You buy that even though she is wordless after the first scene, that is how strong her emotive acting is. She is a performer with a lot of confidence and, again, is someone who we need to see more of on screen.
The entire feel of Ride Baby Ride, from the art direction to the sound, is at a top level here. Everyone is firing on all cylinders to provide us with a great film, and they do so in spades. If you want an energetic and fun short horror watch, you need to find Sofie Somoroff’s film; you won’t regret it.
★★★★
The 19th HollyShorts Film Festival is running between 10th – 20th August with in person and digital screenings available through the 10th to 27th August.
For more information go to www.hollyshorts.com
Coverage of HollyShorts Film Festival 2023:
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