It's easy to imagine even Alan Rickman's sullen potions master Severus Snape leering his approval for Dust. After all, it's not your average feature or short film that would anchor its climax around the alternative medicinal properties of powdered human body parts. Bleak and grotesque as that may sound, Dust is a surprisingly entertaining, eerie little urban fairy tale. Co-writer/directors Ben Ockrent and Jake Russell have concocted a simple, unshowy, but strikingly shot and tightly executed mini-thriller, content to lean on their peerless lead to summon the requisite sinister atmosphere.
Rickman, always excellent, is what makes the film worthwhile, demonstrating his prowess in subtle touches, which colour his work as more than rote sinister posturing. Notice how he trawls his hands across all available surfaces as he slinks between them like Nosferatu, or the little enigmatic quavers in his face, sometimes alarming, sometimes grimly funny, which only become entirely clear on retrospect. As he stalks through the film, forebodingly, it's worth the wait, with a punchline climax (Rickman's supposed stalker is, naturally, a Tooth-snorting Fairy) so wonderfully weird that it leaves you wishing Ockrent and Russell could have worked in such inventive goofiness throughout to fully play the premise to its hilt.
Still – for an investment of seven minutes, Dust is creepy, clever, and, with that money shot of Rickman contorting in sensual agony as he flaps/lurches through the night like a bloated, drunken moth, delivers cinematic satisfaction you never knew you were lacking before you laid eyes on its fantastic wackiness. Give Dust a whirl, and try not to picture him pulling out his grinder the next time your child loses a tooth. Do not disappoint me.
-8/10
Rickman, always excellent, is what makes the film worthwhile, demonstrating his prowess in subtle touches, which colour his work as more than rote sinister posturing. Notice how he trawls his hands across all available surfaces as he slinks between them like Nosferatu, or the little enigmatic quavers in his face, sometimes alarming, sometimes grimly funny, which only become entirely clear on retrospect. As he stalks through the film, forebodingly, it's worth the wait, with a punchline climax (Rickman's supposed stalker is, naturally, a Tooth-snorting Fairy) so wonderfully weird that it leaves you wishing Ockrent and Russell could have worked in such inventive goofiness throughout to fully play the premise to its hilt.
Still – for an investment of seven minutes, Dust is creepy, clever, and, with that money shot of Rickman contorting in sensual agony as he flaps/lurches through the night like a bloated, drunken moth, delivers cinematic satisfaction you never knew you were lacking before you laid eyes on its fantastic wackiness. Give Dust a whirl, and try not to picture him pulling out his grinder the next time your child loses a tooth. Do not disappoint me.
-8/10