Suspense thriller short The Scene from writer/director Daniel Meyers has detective Daniels (Brian May) investigating the kill site where his partner was savagely murdered. The film opens on Daniels interrogating a killer cop (Alphonse Boulos) who has an axe to grind over the digital crime-solving technology the police department has adopted over the years. 

He has confessed to a crime that he says was done so cleverly their tech can’t help them solve it. He bloviates about his sharply defined senses, opining in tedious, unhinged diatribes about how much human skill has been lost, skill that only he has now.

“… investigating the kill site where his partner was savagely murdered …”

Like a criminal from a Sherlock Holmes story, he’s a would-be Moriarty who probably engineered his own arrest so he could lord his superior intellect over the baffled detectives in person. But he does not know there may be someone who has an upper hand, and who knows something even he missed. While the world may be disconnected from reality staring into screens, he is blinded by his own narcissism. 

The maker of a good short film accomplishes in a brief time what a feature director has the luxury of 90 minutes plus to do, and Meyers pulls that off intensely, building suspense right up to the last second  He also defies the expectation to spell out all the mysteries, to provide closure, leaving some intrigues on the table for the viewer to ponder. 

The Scene plays like a compressed Black Mirror episode, a fable in which deadly consequences come to those who are distracted while fully immersed in internet media (like this review!) The film is simultaneously tight, atmospheric, and kinetic.