A woman named Katrina (Kristina Pace) runs through the city wearing an elegant dress, desperately trying to escape something that seems to be following her. She soon meets a man (Matteo Caruana Bond) who helps her. While it has its brief moments, the short film’s final minutes leave you feeling unsettled, for reasons that might be unintentional.

Director Jameson Cucciardi does a fine job of orchestrating the tension in Katrina’s plight, and Kristina Pace delivers a solid performance as she desperately tries to escape from her pursuer. It genuinely feels like a nightmare, the kind you wake up from that affects your entire morning. The horror aspects are well-done with small details and elements that feel genuinely otherworldly. Without giving too much away, there’s much that is unnerving about what’s going on with Katrina.

These horror elements work precisely because they remain suggestive rather than explicit. But any themes or subtext in the first ten or so minutes of the film make way for a final few minutes that make the implicit, explicit. Combining supernatural horror with the upsettingly real, it leaves much to think about, though the overarching message gets lost due to a plot contrivance that I found to be quite confusing.

While Cucciardi and Pace combine to make this a watchable short film, The Bride ultimately leaves more questions than answers. Its hints of subtext and its implications would be spooky enough on their own, but unfortunately, the final minutes throw all that out the window.

The Bride shows in the 3rd Mediterrane Film Festival.