In an age of technology, we tend to live on our phones and depend on the apps that make them all in one devices. What if there was an app that had an answer from how to hit a ball into the hole in pool to a girls interests? That’s the question the short film “APP” raises.
The short film directed by Alexander Berman,tells a story of how no piece of technology, no matter how intelligent, cannot predict or understand human emotion. The knee jerk thing to compare it to would be Spike Jonze’s 2013 critical darling “Her,” but “APP” is a unique tender look at the unpredictable nature of love.
The film starts off as Paul (Braden Lynch), a withdrawn engineer who has created an extremely sophisticated app which is essentially “Siri on steroids,” is in dyer financial trouble. His creation, the Mark McGwire of apps, is threatened when his cloud service bills begin to pile up and the company threatens to terminate his service; throwing away his life’s work. Out of options and courtesy extensions he decides to go out and get the money by convincing Mike Diamond (J.R. Cacia), to put up venture capital for his revolutionary app
Paul uses the app to find Diamond, who is at a bar. At the bar, Diamond challenges Paul by asking him to get with the most beautiful girl, Zoe (Sara Sanderson) in the bar using the app. This, in his mind, would without a doubt prove the effectiveness of an wing woman app. While conversing with the girl, Paul begins to fall in love her. Here, Paul learns that human emotions, especially love, is unpredictable and sometimes illogical, but it’s worth losing it all for.
Simply put, “APP” has a 22-minute runtime and will have you begging for more.
The cast exudes an enormous amount of chemistry and this is elevated by the down to earth human story. Lynch’s and Sanderson’s scenes are the strongest of the short, it actually feels like you are watching two people slowly begging to fall for each other. Director Alexander Berman also does a great job of keeping it simple and focusing on telling a story that the audience can connect to.
Today, we are all guilty of leaving our lives in the hands of technology, failing to realize the importance of human interaction and that is Berman’s greatest triumph. Telling a story that not only acts as mirror to today’s society, but one that speaks about the crazy thing that is human emotion.
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