Short Film: Review 3 - Charlie Bit My Finger (The Horror)

Director Background

Jeff Chan is a Canadian director, producer and writer, who before his Charlie Bit My Finger – The Horror film, had directed two shorts, one of which he wrote. He also produced two more separate shorts in 2009. He graduated film school in 2008 and last year admitted to being a broke filmmaker ever since graduating, even with the success his shorts have garnered.

Reception & Audience

The film has received nearly a million views since it was uploaded to YouTube on May 2011. The short was a big hit with the online crowd, due to it being a horror parody of the popular viral video Charlie Bit My Finger.

Jeff Chan, being a “Redditor” himself, uploaded the short to the “videos” subreddit, where it hit the front page, gaining nearly 2,000 upvotes. There are over a million subscribers to that particular subreddit, which was a major reason it gained the amount of views it did.

Narrative & Textual Analysis

The film’s opening is completely silent, as three lines in a thriller-esque font fade in, introducing the film. The actual lines act as a bit of a juxtaposition, the original viral video is hilarious, and is a complete contrast to the serious tone which the opening lays out.

The entire short is filmed from the point of view of the protagonist, Charlie. The opening fades in to the small child Ethan calling Charlie over to investigate what’s happening outside. Daylight pours through the thin curtains into the low-key lit house, and together with the furniture barricading the windows, suggests that the building is a stronghold to whatever dangers lurk outside.

The entire scene is silent until Charlie draws back the curtain and a zombie unexpectedly bursts through. High-pitched non-diegetic music now plays in the background of the shot, to promote the sense of urgency.

Ethan and Charlie are forced to retreat back into the safety of the house. The camera pans quickly round as a fellow defender of the house throws Charlie a baseball bat. The camera pans quickly again to reveal another zombie entering the room. Charlie waits for the zombie to approach him and swings the bat, creating an over-emphasised video game-esque sound in doing so and knocking the zombie to the ground. The short is also parodying the popular zombie game Left 4 Dead here, via connotations such as the first person point of view, as well as the weapons used and the sound effects which accompany them.

Another zombie lunges at Charlie, knocking him to the ground whilst he uses his bat as a barrier between himself and the zombie. The music picks up now to increase the tension.

The fellow defender of the house grabs Charlie and pulls him back into the recluse of the room to protect him. The camera pans down to Charlie’s arms as he rolls up his sleeve, revealing a deep bite mark.

The camera edges begin to show pulsing red lines, which eventually transform into a red filter covering the entire shot, to represent the transformation which Charlie has made into a zombie, and his sudden craving for blood. The cries from Ethan’s mother as she urges him to run up the stairs to safety are distorted, perhaps representing the zombie’s inability to comprehend the language it once knew.

Just as Charlie reaches the top of his stairs in his bloodthirsty stupor, and the non-diegetic sounds of the high-pitched music climax, Ethan’s mother pulls out a shotgun and fires directly at the camera.

Instead of having the camera spin round or fade out to signify Charlie dying, the camera cuts straight to the lines shown in the screenshot below, the ending to a short which purpose it was to promote the festival. The ending is a morbid take on the originally light-hearted viral video.

Production Trivia

The film is a horror parody of the viral video Charlie Bit My Finger, which was also shown on Rude Tube, a television show which plays popular viral videos from the web. Chan was asked to create the short film for CFC’s Worldwide Short Film Festival of June of 2011.

A SI2K camera was rigged to a baseball helmet to establish the incredible point of view shots, and was counterbalanced by adding a 5 pound weight. The camera operator was said to have a very difficult job because not only did he have to hit his marks and frame the shot properly, he had to act as well.

The short was shot on a budget of $1500.