Short Film : I baked him a cake

Lenora, a young girl, wakes up excited to bake her father his favorite cake on his birthday. As Lenora bakes, she notices strange behavior from Mom. Meanwhile, Dad isn’t home yet and it’s growing late…

Genre : Horror
Country : USA

Cast :
Fleece : Mother
Lilliane Gray : Lenora

Director :
Vanessa Ionta Wright

My opinion on “I baked him a cake”

It was my intention to avoid the walhalla of short films. On the one hand because the number of short films made these days is enormous and as a result my twitter mailbox would be flooded with requests. And on the other hand, because it’s hard for me to judge a movie that only takes about 3 minutes. But when I think about it a bit longer, I can think of some benefits as well. New posts would appear regularly on my blog. A short movie only requires a short review. And a rewatch doesn’t take so long and isn’t detrimental to your leisure time.

And yet, I caved for the friendly request of Samantha Kolesnik when she asked me to watch a short film out of the horror genre. As I feared beforehand, the content is rather limited to assess. It’s professional enough. Cinematically it isn’t so bad. And the created atmosphere is luguber and the film is intriguing. You can see it as a short fragment out of an obscure long story with a psychopathic mother in the lead who probably had to tolerate an abusing husband. Or is the innocent looking daughter Lenora (Lillian Gray) not so innocent? Enough space for self-interpretation and guessing.

The dialogs sometimes feel sort of forced. However, the interpretations are convincing. First there’s the timid daughter who wants to surprise her father on his birthday by baking a cake. And then there’s the frosty and distant mother (Fleece) who’s talking to her daughter in a rather emotionless way. Her explanation about the condition of the bathroom was quite laughable. On the other hand, it shows how bad her mental state is. Although I thought the bathroom looked as if a cooking experiment with a lot of chocolate went wrong there.

“I baked him a cake” is a short but powerful film. The feeling you get afterwards is that of curiosity. You want to know what’ll happen next and what was going on before the situation got out of hand. But most of all I felt pity. Pity for that little girl who just wanted to surprise her father so much. So, if you have a few minutes to spare, you know how to fill it up now.

Extra info provided by the makers :

The film stars Fleece as “Mother” and Lillian Gray as “Lenora”. The film was adapted from a short story by Samantha Kolesnik, which was published in the Spring 2016 issue of Hypnos Magazine. Ross Childress, former lead guitarist for Collective Soul, composed the score for the film. Henrik A. Meyer was the Cinematographer. All special effects were practical, and were done by special effects artist Nadine Al-Remaizan. The sets and art design were by Emily Chomuik, and the film was edited by Brandon Taylor. Samantha Kolesnik and director Vanessa Ionta Wright also collaborated on 2017 horror release Rainy Season which is hitting festivals now, and they both co-founded the Women in Horror Film Festival.

Thanks to Samantha Kolesnik
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/ibakedhimacake/£
Twitter : @ibakedhimacake

Links : IMDB