Taka Tsubota is a Los Angeles-based film director/writer/editor and a former staff writer at Walt Disney Imagineering. Born and raised in Niigata, Japan, he moved to the United States in high school and graduated from the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts in 2018 with a B.A. in Cinema and Media Studies. Taka has worked as a virtual reality designer at a Tokyo-based computer graphics company for 2 years, creating VR projects for Square Enix and H.I.S. while writing and directing his debut film, “Stolen”. Taka is also a professional Japanese writer/translator/cultural consultant currently working on 2 unannounced Amazon Prime Original projects as a staff writer. His latest short, “Canary” is a post-apocalyptic thriller.
“Canary” review is part of the Submit Your Film Initiative
The story revolves around five youths, who, as we learn from flashbacks, drove to a cabin owned by George's father, in order to spend their vacation there. George also brought his younger cousin, Alan, who was immediately subjected to mocking by the rest, and particularly Nev, who exhibited a behavior that can only be described as bullying. However, while in the cabin, creatures that look like metal spiders attacked the world, stranding the group in the cabin. When George left for help but never returned, Alan found his sole champion gone, with the bullying intensifying.
Taka Tsubota creates a rather suffocating setting, since the cabin is a space where bullying is the rule and the outside is infested with monsters. The intense close ups, the red colors that dominate along with the shadows, and the inevitable physical violence that follows the verbal one, intensify the concept, with the same applying to the monstrous sounds heard periodically in the film and the fact that the food is ending. The flashbacks that take place inside the car that eventually led them to the cabin, which are dominated by blue darkness this time, add even more to the atmosphere, as Tsubota eloquently establishes that this is a horror/thriller from the beginning.
As time passes and the bullying gets worse, the central question of the film rises, of whether Alan will stand up to his tormentor, in a setting that is essentially lawless, or if he will choose to run away and face the monsters, in an aspect that intensifies the agony, but can also be perceived as a metaphor on how victims of bullying can react.
The combination of the two, the horrific atmosphere and the bullying, can be also perceived as a comment on human nature, but is also the element that carries the movie from beginning to end, additionally assisted by the excellent audiovisual approach. Barron Leung as Alan and Andrew Hayden Kang as Nev give rather convincing performances in their clash as victim and perpetrator. The latter's character can be described as a somewhat cliched bully, but overall, the type of persona works well for the narrative.
Despite the fact that I feel that anyone who watches the movie would like to see what happens afterwards, “Canary” is an excellent genre short, that manages to make its comments and present its story in all its glory, in just 17 minutes, in a testament to Tsubota's directorial abilities.
