Heartless: A Short Work of Brilliance

SPOILER ALERT: The following review contains spoilers.

“So I am mad, you say? You should have seen how careful I was to put the body where no one could find it”-Edgar Allan Poe, “Tell-Tale Heart.”

Number one rule for getting away with murder, never move the body. You move the body, you get the carpet fibers in your car, your DNA on the suspect, the thick black sludge of corpse blood on your hands. Never move the body.

In indie horror short film, Heartless, our dear killer knows the rules of getting away with murder, but will she? Heartless tells the tale of a seemingly powerless corporate exec, Shelby (Stacy Snyder) regaining her power through good old-fashioned murder. Directed by Kevin Sluder and his wife Jennifer, this horror short delivers the gore, scares, and badass punk music that will haunt your dreams for weeks to come.

Heartless is the directorial debut from the award-winning production company Sunshine Boy Productions. And what a debut it is. Much like sociopathic pretty boy, Patrick Bateman of the American Psycho book and film, our girl Shelby is running low on humanity. Shelby, picture her being just another woman in a sky-high corporate office, invisible to her male coworkers, invisible to herself.

The film opens to eerie music and creaky doors like we’ve stumbled upon Jigsaw blasting his greatest hits. Enter Shelby, wavy, fake-blonde hair, hastily done makeup, and a look on her face that says, “What have I done?” Picture her a Denny’s waitress who just did meth in the walk-in freezer. Shelby tries to compose herself in the women’s restroom, the only place a woman is really safe from the monstrous men at work.

Shelby narrows her big eyes, looking at herself in the mirror, as guilt, the last shred of her humanity comes creeping out. “Stop it! Stop it!” she screams at herself, at her soul, as if it say, “Stop feeling!” Unlike Bateman of American Psycho, who sees murder as quotidian as a sunrise, Shelby’s new to the game. She’s done something awful last night, or has she?

Cut to the guttural shrieking of metal music of “Farewell, Mona Lisa” by The Dillinger Escape Plan. Shelby’s entrance music empowers her as she walks into the conference room with her head held high. The song lyrics hearken back to Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart” with screaming questions, What am I supposed to think? What am I supposed to feel?

As Shelby stands in front of a glass door, we see her double, a symbol of her double life. Sure, she’s just another corporate cog in the machine by day, but what does she do at night? Pilates? Wine? Homicide? It becomes clear that Shelby’s the type of girl who gets off on hurting others, she’s her very own Christian Grey.

The men in the lobotomized beige conference room are your typical Big Oil-looking douchebags. These are the type of greased down, thousand-dollar suits, men that take grande latte enemas and grab waitresses’ asses as their god-given right. These suspenders-wearing assholes, they love saying bro as much as Poe loves semicolons. They don’t even notice Shelby’s presence and carry on saying things like, “Full-frontal, bro!”

As Shelby tries to maintain her grey-suit, office demeanor, flashes of a crime seep into her reality like a PTSD flashback of IEDs and mortars. The woman she’s covering for seems to be missing. Eerie music sets in as the men continue to objectify and play with Shelby, saying “Knock ‘em dead, Shel.” The irony is that Shelby actually knocked someone dead last night.

Flash to last night with Shelby in her after-work-homeless hipster look facing off with some uptight, business casual chick. The chick with black hair is arguing with Shelby, ending with “We’re replacing you!” Shelby, she breaks the woman’s nose with an iPhone, as anyone would.

Before the woman can complain, Shelby stabs her voice box with a pair of scissors in what has to be my favorite scene of the film. The look of shock across the victim’s face juxtaposed with the sheer look of sociopathic excitement on Shelby’s contrasts the characters well. We get to see the blood, guts, and visceral emotion that Poe never covered in his work.

A voice comes from the iPhone, as the victim struggles to talk ala Casey and her house phone in Scream (1996). Then we’re back in the sedated conference room, the corpse sitting with her slit throat staring blankly at Shelby. The corpse works as a beautiful metaphor for the common office worker. Nothing is real. Nothing matters. Nothing has meaning. The corpse could be any corporate worker, a zombie muttering things about last quarter, conference calls, synergy.

What’s great about the corpse is that Shelby is the only one who can see the ghost, showing the invisibility of women in the workforce. Only Shelby can see the other woman in the room as is the reality for so many women. Women are invisible when it comes time for an important meeting, a promotion, the men’s club corporate retreat that is the modern workplace. Women only become visible when men need an ass to grab or a scapegoat for their flaws.

It’s refreshing to see a woman like Shelby in an American Psycho-type role that’s usually men-only. American Psycho typecasts have been played out. How many sociopathic, white, male killers that pass for normal do we really need? As a woman, I can think of several of these archetypes I’ve met in real life. I’ve worked with these men, I’ve seen them in the streets, I’ve probably even dated them. I fall asleep every time I watch America Psycho because that male archetype has saturated my consciousness that it doesn’t even register anymore.

Shelby, however, subverts traditional horror tropes by being the female sociopath, a role usually relegated to TV vampire shows. The all-American feminist that she is, Shelby literally kills other women to get to the top and feels little-to-no remorse the next day. It’s a refreshing respite from the traditional male killer who slaughters women, because well, mommy issues.

Walking barefoot through a grass field, Shelby carries a big ax, following her still-breathing victim. Remembering the horror rule never to assume anyone is dead, Shelby hacks the bitch to death with the ax. Blood sprays Shelby’s face as she dismembers her coworker much like the killer in the “Tell-Tale Heart.” But this isn’t a PG-13 Poe story, so we get actual blood, unsettling violence, and a badass killer who’s flipped the humanity switch.

Unable to separate last night’s murder from today’s PowerPoint, Shelby stabs a man in the eye with a pen, tripping balls like a college freshman at a Widespread Panic show. Flashing back and forth between boardroom and murder scene, we see Shelby rip the heart from her dying coworker, like a vampire-hunter killing an Original. Everything is covered in a film of thick, maroon blood, like Carrie on prom night.

The heart keeps beating, in the field, in the boardroom, taunting dear Shelby as it taunted Poe’s leading man. As the heart pulses and oozes, you can feel your own heart beating, your chest tightening with fear. Shelby force-feeds one of the douche-bros the “heart” which is really just a muffin. But who’s to say what’s real? Besides, death by blueberry muffin is a perfect way to emasculate douche-bro as he dies at his desk.

The lone surviving douche-bro sits at the desk in fear. Shelby towers over him and delivers the final line, “I forgot to ask, how do you take your coffee?” This takes us to the credits and reunites us with the screams of white boy pain as “Farewell, Mona Lisa” blares across the end credits.

In the end, you get a horror short with an empowered female role, badass metal music, and more blood and gore than all of Poe’s works combined. Heartless takes Poe’s stories and finally makes them R-rated, giving us the gory violence we deserve. So, if you need a refreshing break from the archetypical white, male, killer, Heartless is the film for you.

Heartless screened at HorrorHound Film Festival on opening night, Friday Aug. 24th at 6 pm EST, ahead of the feature E-Demon, at The JW Marriott Indianapolis on 10 S West St, Indianapolis, Indiana, 46204. The film was nominated for Best Short Film and Best Director, Short Film at the festival. Follow Heartless online, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.