FIVE MINUTES: Much More Than Just A Short Film

Five Minutes is an interactive short horror film set in a future where the world is overrun with zombies. After being infected, dad John knows he only has five minutes before he turns. But he is loathe to leave his daughter, Mia. So he locks her away and pushes his five minutes in the hopes that he can retain his memories and fight off the change.

Simply put, Five Minutes is a short horror film from the filmmaker Maximilian Niemann. But actually, it’s a lot more complicated than that. The film is produced by the German publicly funded film school Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg. Yes, this is a student film. Unusually, the film is also an experiment in advertising for the Casio G-Shock company. But don’t worry the filmmakers, by their own admission, aren’t trying to manipulate you. Instead they are hoping to show you a more enjoyable way of engaging in advertising, with an aim at making an advert which embraces the product instead of trying to smuggle it in to the narrative. But if you thought that all this meant you were about to watch a poor quality German-speaking advert, then you will be pleasantly surprised. The film has incredibly high production values and has won a slew of awards, more than that it actually stars British actors: the seasoned Kieran Bew (Da Vinci’s Demons) and newbie Hannah Chinn.

Five Minutes’ provenance can hardly be a surprise when the film itself is something of a Frankenstein’s monster. While it’s a complete narrative, it also works as an interactive computer game, and the audience are invited to control John’s fate. But if you were expecting to be able to access multiple scenes and endings you would be wrong. While you are invited to join in with the action the only thing you effect is the pace of the story, and the only alternative storyline available to you is the one in which you cause John to kill himself before you have reached the film’s official end.

Before the film begins you are asked to choose your level of difficulty: Tourist, Moderate or Hell. I know you’re probably curious as to what each level entails, but they are actually exactly the same. The level of difficulty pertains to how quickly you need to react to the game. But then if you don’t actually make the required movement (tapping or swiping the screen) in time, you only lose a life. If you lose three lives John dies. Even then it’s not game over, you just get to re-enter the film/game on the task you failed at. I tried messing up multiple times to find out what would happen, and was kind of disappointed to find out that there was no other option than to continue on in exactly the same way as if I had succeeded.

While I was disappointed with the lack of options available, I considered the fact that this is first and foremost a short film. The narrative is something we’re familiar with, but it is still very entertaining and Bew gives a great performance. I have a few quibbles (mainly about one line that although is important in setting up the film’s ending, is badly dropped into the narrative) but overall it’s very good. It’s just unfortunate that, although the story is well-written, you are constantly grappling with prompts for interaction and so don’t really have time to enjoy it.

Overall, Five Minutes is an interesting experience. Although it never really succeeds as a straight up computer game, nor as a short film, as an experiment in modern advertising it’s brave, impressive, and of an incredibly high quality. I highly recommend you try it out, but with a few caveats. To really get the best experience possible out of Five Minutes I would recommend watching it on a tablet (you have to swipe the screen, this would get difficult with a mouse pad) and choosing ‘Hell’. The speed of this option will no doubt enhance the experience for you and, while you may kill John a few times, this will only serve to increase your interest in how it all ends. Also, be warned, the film actually runs at about ten minutes (not five), longer again if you make mistakes.

You can watch/play Five Minutes here.

What did you think of Five Minutes? Did you choose the Hell option?