Directed by Sebastiano Pupino and written by Thalia Kent-Egan, haunted by strange visions and nightmares, Clari receives a mysterious call from a long lost friend who hides a dark secret from their past. Starring: Carolina Lopes, Mike Sweeney-Collier and Gaz Hayden.
One key strength that any short film will benefit from is being able to communicate the atmosphere, tone and themes of the short very quickly and without having to really say anything. Rain, Rain, Go Away achieves that, it immediately brings through a darkness and intensity, strongly implying the cloud that hangs over its leading character. It opens up a lot of questions, nudging you in the right direction to unfold its layers.
Sebastiano Pupino does a great job of adding a quality to the visual of being watched, giving the atmosphere a sinister touch. It’s an interesting choice of styles to approach what is a complex, heavy topic but horror can encompass a lot of things, especially when they involve fear, pain or suffering. However, as things move forward Pupino brings in a use of effects that dampens its strong tone, it moves things in a direction which is disjointed. The effects work itself is well done but it feels out of place and becomes a distraction.
That leads into what is Rain, Rain, Go Away’s key weakness, it makes so much of an attempt to interpret the emotions at work in an unusual way that it undermines them. It didn’t need to go beyond the implications and the relatable, accessible performance from Carolina Lopes, to get its point across. That then leads to the story not feeling fully developed and giving a bluntness to its ending, which doesn’t do justice to the potential it began with.
Rain, Rain, Go Away chose a difficult subject and a clever way to explore it but it feels as though it didn’t achieve everything it could have. There’s a lot of strong elements at work but ultimately, it strays into more manufactured territory towards its end which makes its resolution fairly unsatisfying.
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