- Director: Sofie Somoroff
- Writer: Sofie Somoroff
- Stars: Celina Bernstein, Anthony Richard Pagliaro, Sam H. Clauder II
REVIEW
Ride Baby Ride, Director Sofie Somoroff’s newest short film is a riff on the rape revenge genre with a twist on Christine thrown in for good measure. Horror, as it always has been, is a conduit to call out the things that are wrong with society, and Ride Baby Ride continues that tradition.
When The Mechanic (Bernstein) buys a ’78 Camaro from a pair of very skeezy pair of backwoods leachers, she brings it to her garage to begin to restore the Camaro. As she begins to work on it, the car seems to want to hurt her and maybe eventually kill her…
The themes in Ride Baby Ride, are very blunt and plain for all to see, and Somoroff gets super visceral about it all, and that was a great choice. The Mechanic clearly knows her way around cars as her early dialogue indicates, but the two men just see her as ‘spicy’ when she offers them less than asking price. As The Mechanic tries to work on the Camaro, she gets physically abused by the car, as if the car has been imbued with the pair of creeps that sold it. Then on a different level it speaks to females doing things in male dominated areas, so not only is she seen as a potential target but also as someone that doesn’t know what they are doing just because she is a woman.
Somoroff and Cinematographer Gemma Doll-Grossman produce some great looking shots, close-ups of the engine, all the greasy and grime of the car and it is beautifully shot for a one location short film. The sequence inside the car as The Mechanic is trying to get out is outstanding, ringing as much atmosphere and dread from a short sequence as possible.
Bernstein is flat out sensational. Manging the physicality of the role and well as the emotional side of it perfectly. The film runs on her performance, a performance that only has about two lines worth of dialogue, but Bernstein still manages to give the audience those final girl feels and as a result the film just rises off it. A fantastic short film from top to bottom with hopefully more on the way from Somoroff.
Ride Baby Ride is available on ALTER now.
Ryan Morrissey-Smith
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