This summary provides the key details about the short horror film "2AM Smiling Man" in 3 sentences: The film follows a man who is walking home alone at night and is chased by a strange man wearing a yellow suit. There is an eerie feeling created by the empty nighttime streets and unsettling sounds without music. In the end, it is ambiguous whether the protagonist escapes or is killed by the strange man, leaving the audience unsure if a new equilibrium is reached.

1. 2AM Smiling Man
This is a a low budget short horror film. It only has two characters and it is
shot on location on a city street at night.
A man is walking home at night time when a strange man wearing a yellow
suit approaches him the strange man is acting in a weird way and is chasing
him as he tries to get away. There is no music, diegetic or non-diegetic
throughout, but a few interruptions of musical notes every once in a while -
connoting to the audience that there is something wrong, which works well
with the stereotypical time of night. Itis edited to have different views such
as the first person view of the person who is running and a long shot of him
running down a street. Although the character in the yellow suit doesn’t
seem that hostile at first the camera angles and sound do a good job of
making him seem scary. As the film takes place at night in the empty streets
it gives the viewer an erie feeling. At the end the protagonist is shown and
then it shows a black screen that makes it as if the character is dead.
Even with a short film you can think about cyclical narrative theory.
 Equilibrium – the man walks home alone at night
 Disruption – there is another man there – and he is strange
 Recognition – the other man goes from being strange to being
threatening
 Reaction – the first man runs away and escapes
 New equilibrium – or does he?
The film doesn’t tie up an ending – we don’t know if the man in the yellow
suit is really threatening of just weird and we don’t know whether the first
man is safe now – but it doesn’t feel like it. Short films are like this – they
don’t have time to set up complicated plots or to tie everything up at the
end, they are more likely to be a snapshot of one incident.
The film’s messages and values are fairly simple – be careful at night, don’t
trust strangers. They are not very positive messages. You could argue that
the film is taking somebody who may just be strange and different and is

2. making us convinced that ‘different’ is threatening. It’s certainly true that
nothing actually happens in the film beyond threat.
The audience for a short film like 2am are mainly more hard-core genre fans
– so the main demographic or psychographic will be from lifestyle
interests. They will find out about it from online discussion, they might go
to horror film festivals where films like this will be shown, and they will be
more likely to find out about it.
The means that they are probably young, 16-24, and also, with this film,
probably more male because there are no female characters in this film at
all.