ALL AMERICAN TERRORIST

In just fourteen minutes, "All American Terrorist," written and directed by Payton Bayless, doesn’t simply tell a story—it disturbs one into silence. Stark, searing, and emotionally unrelenting, this experimental short defies conventional narrative arcs in favour of something more intimate, raw, and morally murky. It’s less about what happens, and more about what it stirs inside you. And what it stirs is uneasy, necessary, and painfully human.

At its core, this is a film about a boy called Moses and the ripple effect of a trauma too large to contain. From the opening frame, Bayless establishes a world that feels eerily quiet—not in the absence of sound, but in the hollowness that follows grief. Through a blend of dialogue and visual storytelling, we are not just shown events—we’re asked to feel them. To sit in the silences. To observe the disintegration of a boy searching for balance in a world that has violently tilted.

The film’s experimental nature doesn’t abstract the drama—it amplifies it. Bayless leans into an elliptical, pared-back style that favours tone over exposition. The camera lingers, not out of indulgence, but intention. Every shot feels considered, every frame loaded with unspoken weight. There’s no score to tell us how to feel, no traditional morality tale guiding our sympathies. We simply witness—and that’s the point.

What elevates "All American Terrorist" is its refusal to moralise. Bayless doesn’t offer tidy conclusions or present his protagonist as a hero or villain. Instead, he invites us into the psychological contours of grief, rage, and helplessness. Moses is not a symbol—he is a person, fragile and flailing. And his choices—while ethically fraught—emerge from a place so real, it’s impossible to view them without discomfort. And perhaps a trace of understanding.

The film also interrogates masculinity in crisis, the absence of social structures, and the toxic myth that vengeance can bring clarity. But it never does so with a heavy hand. There’s a quiet sophistication in how the story unfolds, letting audiences draw their own ethical lines. In doing so, "All American Terrorist" asks a sobering question: What are we capable of when no one comes to save us?

Bayless directs with a sharp eye and a deep sense of empathy. The visual language—bleak but beautiful—mirrors Moses’ internal spiral. There’s a restrained tension to the performances, with Nicholas Basile delivering a portrayal that is emotionally brittle, yet grounded. He doesn’t perform grief. He wears it. Quietly. Awkwardly. As many do in real life.

And though the film never resorts to cheap sentiment, it is undeniably tragic. Not because it sensationalises violence, but because it confronts how ordinary the descent into violence can be when pain goes unacknowledged and accountability is absent. In a society where grief is too often criminalised, and justice feels elusive, Bayless frames violence not as spectacle—but as consequence.

Ultimately, "All American Terrorist" is less about answers and more about fractures—those within systems, within communities, and most heartbreakingly, within ourselves. It forces a reckoning with how easy it is to lose one's way when pain has no outlet, when the world shrugs at your suffering, and when vengeance feels like the last remaining language.

This is not an easy film. But then again, the truth rarely is.