POEM

Andrea D’Amario’s "Poem" is the kind of short that doesn’t waste a second. In eight minutes it captures the thrill-seeking recklessness of teenage boys, the addictive pull of social media, and the timeless terror of summoning something you can’t control. What begins as a TikTok stunt spirals into a nightmare, and D’Amario makes that spiral feel sickeningly real.

Blake and Ryan are the kind of kids who live for views and likes, measuring their worth in the currency of fleeting virality. Their ritual—candles lit, camera streaming, poem recited—is almost laughably amateur, and that’s what makes it work so well. The scene feels authentic, the sort of idiotic dare you could stumble across on your own feed. But when the candles die and silence thickens, the familiar slips into the uncanny. You feel the air change. You know something has answered.

What makes "Poem" so unnerving is the way it pulls the viewer in with that same voyeuristic curiosity the boys are chasing. We lean closer, half-expecting a cheap jump scare, and instead we’re handed a slow, dreadful unravelling.

When Blake disappears, his disembodied voice echoing out of the dark, it’s not just a scare—it’s a rupture. Reality itself seems to fracture. The basement becomes a trapdoor into something unseen and malicious, and the final stretch is pure nightmare fuel.

D’Amario and cinematographer Matt Labra don’t oversell the horror. The camerawork is sleek but never flashy, letting the atmosphere carry the dread. Shadows swallow corners, the light flickers just a beat too long, and the sound design burrows under your skin. Patel and Leung are fully convincing, their dynamic shifting from cocky banter to raw panic in a way that feels alarmingly natural.

Short horror often stumbles on either predictability or lack of payoff. "Poem" does neither. It knows exactly how much to show, when to cut, and when to let the imagination do the rest. The twist isn’t telegraphed, and the lingering unease outlasts the runtime.

This isn’t just a fun little scare—it’s a warning dressed up as entertainment. A reminder that the hunger for attention can invite something much darker than trolls in the comments. "Poem" is sharp, slick, and genuinely chilling. Seek it out. Watch it in the dark. But don’t be surprised if you catch yourself checking the shadows afterwards.