By: Malasha Parker
Supper Review
Supper surprises audiences with a twist that leaves a lingering feeling even after the credits have started to roll. It’s a short film that shows the horrors of using AI and deepfakes, but also highlights the sadness behind the reason why people take these measures. Jayme Lawson gives another excellent performance in this eerie unique thriller.
The film begins with a man whose body is distorting the more he watches a stream of a woman doing a mukbang. We then see close shots of food being eaten as Aleena’s (Jayme Lawson) friend calls her name. Aleena snaps out of it and joins in her friends’ conversation. The scene switches to Minnie Munch’s (Mia Sydney) mukbang while the audience sees and hears food being eaten. The image of Aleena’s eyes and her chewing flash in between the mukbang scenes. The more money Minnie receives, the more aggressive her eating gets. A man views the mukbang at the same time and seemingly watches her house. Aleena gets dressed and goes to a restaurant. It seems she sadly gets stood up for an anniversary dinner. She goes back home and when she arrives she makes dinner. She hears a noise and sees a man is in her house looking for someone else. She gets scared but he tells her he isn’t there to hurt her. When he finally starts to leave, he passes by her computer and sees Minnie on the screen. He realizes that the mukbang streams that he has been watching and sending money to is not a real person. The two then engage in a conversation about the effects of this for both of them and, surprisingly, end in a calm conclusion. They start to talk about how she is only doing it to make money because doing it using her own face didn’t make as much and he talks about his obsession with the mukbanger.
Jayme Lawson is radiant in this film, even with a good majority of it being in a darker setting. She pulls off both calm and scared when Aleena confronts the intruder, Ivan (Sam Straley), and also manages to show a subtle fear and discomfort that she’s sharing a meal with a stranger/burglar that she’s also finding similarities between their lives.
Savannah Braswell does a great job of immediately capturing the audience’s attention and keeping it. Though it may seem weird where the storyline is leading, it also feels like a fresh end to a scenario that could have made a complete one-eighty. The ways that loneliness can settle with people in different ways is intriguing to see through Braswell’s short film. The cinematography from Samuel Wright Smith is absolutely stunning. While I enjoyed the writing it did feel disconnected in some places, but it also fit with the style of the short film the more it went on.
Supper also shines a light on deception and obsession. Streaming can easily become more intimate than anybody ever imagined and when people begin to pay to watch, they feel entitled to a person. Seeing Lawson in another dark film with a touch of humor was nice. It always helps to have a gorgeous lead character that makes it easy to pay attention to their role. Supper is a short film that comes highly recommended. It’s one that makes people think that something beautiful can be made from indie films.