I’m just messing with you
Main Cast: Analisa Gutierrez, Rudy Guerrero
Director: Avishai Weinberger
I’m just gonna go ahead and spoil this one upfront; I tried really hard to like THIRD DATE, twice, but the amount of pathos writer/director Avishai Weinberger is insisting on injecting into this 17-minute horror short is out of control.
Jordana (Analisa Gutierrez) and Andrew (Rudy Guerrero) are on their third date—hence the title—and Jordana is still nervous and making bad jokes, then following up with, “I’m just messing with you.” Andrew is unfazed and as a change of pace from whatever their first two dates consisted of, he takes her to a pizza place he says has sentimental value to him. He eats an ice cream sandwich while Jordana doesn’t touch her extremely large piece of pizza and I’m wondering how many pizza places sell ice cream sandwiches? If that’s what I’m craving, you can buy them at the store. And I recognize that plain white wrapper; this pizza place isn’t making their own artisanal ice cream sandwiches.
Anyway. Andrew let’s slip that he loves Jordana and she says not to say that, it’s only their third date and he doesn’t know her that well; she’s got secrets in her past, and she’s afraid if he finds out what they are, he won’t like her anymore.
Andrew excuses himself to the bathroom where he struggles with some inner demon of his own, telling it “not yet”, while out in the dining room, a worker warns Jordana that Andrew comes there a lot, with different girls.
Andrew and Jordana leave the restaurant, Andrew pointing out she barely touched her food, which is a dirty lie: she didn’t touch it at all. Then they take an Uber back to Andrew’s place. Jordana is hesitant to go inside, but she gives in and Andrew tells her not to worry about the plastic; he’s having some remodeling done. That’s when you say cool, I don’t want to spoil the effect, so I’ll just come back after it’s done.
But Jordana sticks it out until Andrew kisses her and tells her, again, that he loves her. Jordana panics and tries to leave, but Andrew tells her he looked her up, that thing with the kid. He can get past it, but he’s not sure anyone else can. And Jordana is so desperate for love, that’s all she needs to hear. She goes back inside and they start to kiss, Jordana somehow not noticing Andrew handcuffing her to the fridge.
Turns out that plastic wasn’t for remodeling, but because Andrew’s got a creature that haunts him, killing and eating anyone Andrew falls in love with. But if he doesn’t feed it, then Andrew will also starve, so he keeps falling for people he can feed to the creature. Well, Jordana’s made of sterner stuff than that, and Andrew forgot to move the knives out of her reach, so she escapes the only way someone chained the fridge and within reach of a knife can escape—once cutting through the handcuff chain doesn’t work—and she runs out into the street, collapsing before a couple who happen to see her fall down. They call for an ambulance and Jordana asks the man if he loves the woman he’s with. Yes, he says, and she laughs/cries, saying, “Not as much as he loved me.” And that’s when I knew I wasn’t going to like this short.
Not that it was all that great up to that point, but that final line just really drove home for me how much I do NOT need sentimentality in my horror shorts. If you want to make a full-length movie and this is just part of it, a subplot or a character building trait, fine, whatever, but when you’ve only got 17 minutes and some change to work with, just give me horror.
The acting is okay for what the two leads are being asked to convey, and the effect of the creature isn’t bad, impressive enough in what we do see that we’re not really looking for the seams. In fact, the overall look of THIRD DATE was impressive. It was a small movie with a minimal cast, but the production looked very professional. I just didn’t like the story. And I really wanted to. But somewhere along the way, Weinberger felt the need to go emotional with the story and it just didn’t work. This is horror. We don’t do emotional until after you’ve taken care of the visceral, and THIRD DATE just didn’t have it.
Maybe I’ll see these actors in something better down the road, but I won’t be having a third date with THIRD DATE.
C. Dennis Moore is the author of over 60 published short stories and novellas in the speculative fiction genre. Most recent appearances are in the Dark Highlands 2, What Fears Become, Dead Bait 3 and Dark Highways anthologies. His novels are Revelations, and the Angel Hill stories, The Man in the Window, The Third Floor, and The Flip.
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