Summary
Bad acting and cheap B-movie creatures haunt the screen in this unnecessary short.
This review of the Netflix short film Erax contains spoilers.
The short film is an odd subsection of the cinematic medium, one used by fresh-faced filmmakers as a stepping stone to feature lengths and to showcase their many talents, but there is no real market for them. Most people will have warm, fuzzy memories of the Pixar shorts screened before the studio’s feature films. These were impressive and light, working as an introduction to that animated world, a little taster of what was to come. It’s a worthy art form, yet one that doesn’t really have a purpose on streaming sites. Netflix continues to produce a couple of these a year, but they’re bound to go unnoticed in the vast sea of content.
Erax is the latest short offering from Netflix, at just ten minutes in length (15 if you include credits). The short film is about Auntie Opal (Blindspotting actress Jasmine Cephas Jones), who turns up late to her niece Nina’s birthday party. Her present, a creepy-looking book that she stole from the side of the road, happens to unleash a host of beasts into their house, in this kid-friendly fantasy. These creatures are the Erax, purple gremlins with long, unnatural arms, a gruesome set of gnashers, and long, sharp claws.
From reading the enchanted book, Nina discovers that they must return all these monsters back to the magical pages within, or they will become frozen in time. A surprisingly laidback Auntie Opal and her niece decided to team up and defeat these horrid creations. Opal sports a colander on her head and Nina readies the thick book as a weapon. They slowly work their way through the many scampering creatures ransacking the house, until all the beasts are back inside the book.
This is a redundant short film, with lazy B-movie creatures, clunky camera work, and decidedly bad acting. There is nothing new to enjoy from this story and no talent on display. It looks cheap and that may have appealed to the Netflix bank account, but I’m struggling to find any other positives to speak of. Parents may stick this on to quieten the kids for a couple of minutes, what else is it good for?
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