Mark Slutsky's Never Happened

Imagine a world where you can erase anything that makes you feel regret, discomfort, anguish and so on. Sounds pretty great, yes? Never Happened (2015), an eight-minute short film directed by Mark Slutsky, presents this seemingly brilliant idea as a moral quandary for viewers. This low-budget science-fiction short infuses a frills-free indie aesthetic with a larger, futuristic concept to create a dark and unsettling story about the limitless bounds of future technology. This Canadian speculative fiction sees businessman Grady (Aaron Abrams) returning home after his travels to his pregnant wife, Sharon. This present homecoming scene is intercut with Grady’s business trip with his attractive female colleague Laura (Mia Kirshner) After acing a big presentation, the pair celebrate with drinks that no doubt leads to a “will they, won’t they” scenario outside of Laura’s hotel room. Of course, a night of passionate sex between the inebriated two ensues, leading to a seemingly presumptuous plotline of colleague infidelity while …show more content…
The gloomy mise-en-scenes, coupled with the fast-paced humming and drumming of the film’s non-diegetic music, reinforces the sci-fi tones of this smart short. Rather than detailing or creating a spectacle out of its broad concept, Slutsky prefers to showcase effective and impactful ideas through the genre of lo-fi science fiction. As the world continues to grow ever more technologically-dependent and obsessed, it will be interesting to see what filmmakers do with its positive, and negative, potentials. Never Happened was presented by DUST, a new online platform dedicated to exhibiting science-fiction short films, and its growing catalogue of films offers equally interesting insights into the direction of short film