Anatasha Blakely’s Maladjustment is a horror harnessing the unique experience of the pandemic lockdowns of a past that is yet to recede into the crevices of memory. Its ten-minute runtime feels much longer for the stifling intensity of the story, following a couple speed-burning their way through a few stages of love.
![Maladjustment - Short Film Review - Indie Shorts Mag](https://www.indieshortsmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Maladjustment-Short-Film-Review-Indie-Shorts-Mag-3.jpeg)
Ben (Allen Regimbal, co-writer, alongside Jae Patrick) is furloughed. Abby (Natalie Polisson) is adjusting to a work life confined to her living room. The mood about to overwhelm the story is prefigured in the tightly framed opening shot of their bedroom. The house becomes a prison and each is the other’s hellish prison mate. Minute sounds grate on the nerves. Ticks and flaws become unforgivable. Playful aggression foregoes play.
![Maladjustment - Short Film Review - Indie Shorts Mag](https://www.indieshortsmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Maladjustment-Short-Film-Review-Indie-Shorts-Mag-2.jpeg)
The film chronicles this evolution with its relentlessness intact, showcased in the neurotic, non-linear cuts. Events overlap with each other through their sensorial memory much as the days blend into one another. What had begun as a luxury becomes a perversion of all the feelgood quotes hung up in the couple’s house (Together is my favourite place to be, as a nightmarish example). Hatred and resentment become obsessive, deployed deliberately in the worst moments. The sound design fashions the everpresent, unpleasant list of sounds into a background score escalating into a climax that embodies every bit of the film’s title. Polisson is terrifyingly excellent; anyone who sees the film’s final minutes will know why.
Maladjustment speaks from experience—a vivid, compelling speech that, going by statistics, many will resonate with.
Maladjustment: The Horrors in Lived Experience
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