![chameleon title image SR Pick [Video]: Short Film Chameleon Keeps You Guessing](http://cdn.screenrant.com/wp-content/uploads/chameleon-title-image.jpg "Chameleon Short FIlm")
The casual moviegoer may consider a short film to be anything that plays before a Pixar movie, but the more enthusiastic cinephile understands that short films can sometimes be more exciting, interesting, and have a better story than the average big budget blockbuster film.
Cue director Sam Lemberg and his new short film Chameleon, based on a short science fiction story by author Colin Harvey (read the entire short story HERE). In under six minutes Lemberg has managed to make a film that is interesting, well acted, has decent SFX, and will keep the viewer guessing up until the very end – an impressive feat.
Chameleon picks up seven months after a hostile race of aliens have invaded Earth and the government fears that the aliens are modifying their DNA to pose as humans. After military officer Herb (James C. Burns) mysteriously reappears months after being abducted, his wife Emily (Lucy Rayner) is called in to ask him questions only she would know to find out who or what he really is.
Check out the film below:
When properly executed, a short film can get right to the point of being amusing, entertaining or thought provoking and, in some cases, it can catch the eye of a big Hollywood studio executive. In the past couple of years short films such as The Gift, Panic Attack and The Raven (no correlation to the upcoming Edgar Allen Poe inspired John Cusack thriller The Raven) all started as short films and are all now in some stage of big screen development. Remember District 9 from Neill Blomkamp? That of course, came from his indie short film Alive in Joburg.
Could Lemberg’s Chameleon be the next short film to get a big screen treatment?
Follow me on Twitter – @Walwus – and tell me what other short films you enjoyed watching.
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Wow!!! Didn’t see that coming! Thank you Screenrant for posting this!
Let me guess..she turns out to be the Alien..? Lol
I could see this being lengthened to a feature…of course, now that the short’s twist is revealed, this particular scene would have to be just that…a scene in the bigger story, probably near the start or shown as a prologue.
They could do a Terminator type thing, show that scene as the present, then go back a year or two, then show how it all began. I’d like to know who the alien’s are, where they came from, how they were discovered.
Make a great feature.
I saw it coming and still loved it. Excellent movie.
No, it shouldn’t be expanded, for reasons that were most elegantly expressed by Ambrose Bierce when he defined “Novel” in his “Devil’s Dictionary” back in the day. The man had credibility, for he also included 4 enjoyable and complete short stories under his definition of “Story” in the same work.
They didn’t have movies back then, but Bierce’s definition of the short story form that he had mastered applies to “Chameleon” and other such short films (the original “9,” anyone?): “A narrative, commonly untrue.”
This film is a complete narrative. Sure it could be redone – it would turn into a completely different thing if it were expanded, though. The two most important qualities I felt from it – the need, due to the short length, to immediately make up my mind about the soldier (with inherent uncertainty about why I felt he was okay); and the need to explain in detail why the aliens duplicated her and not him (it’s so much better explained by simply not knowing – there are any number of possible explanations for that, as many as there are viewers, and each explanation some used in their feature film would make it a totally different movie).
This isn’t to say that a feature-length “Chameleon” would be bad. It could be an award-winning blockbuster.
It just wouldn’t be this “Chameleon” whatsoever.
Excellent acting by both man and woman, by the way. Hope they go on to have wonderful careers!
Don’t get me wrong…I’m not saying it SHOULD be expanded to a feature. I was simply making a point based on the question asked at the end of the article. I agree that it was great “as is”.
It would be a cooler twist, when the woman and all the military staff turns out to be alien-chameleons on a sort of TV-Set, on an alien ship. They are doing this “show” to get all the intimate info from the “bound-guy”.
So the “bound-guy-clone” learns all the intimate stuff from him, to convince the real wife and the real military on earth, that he is not a clone. Bam!
pretty good. alien looked like a drawing and took away from the experience a little bit. but you cant expect really expensive effects on a short film. other then that little nit pick i thought it was great.
If they took this and expanded it into a movie it would just turn out like all the rest of the secret alien take over movies with this one, small, clever part lost in an ultimately mediocre and overdone movie plot.
This is the type of thing that would be a great Outer Limits / Twilight Zone short and leave it at that.
Very cool
Wow !! I can’t believe you packed so much into so short a time. I was glued to the movie from beginning to end, and I’ve already watched it three times and it’s better every time. Great story, great screenplay, great acting. I wish the theatres would show a short like this before a movie.