The Witches of Pool Bottom Review
“You’re finally going to be happy. You’re finally going to be perfect.” – Rachel’s Perfect Image
The Witches of Pool Bottom is the latest short film from director/producer and writer Ava Bounds. The film is currently on the festival circuit and was entered in to the HollyShorts Film Festival this past summer.
Its scant seven minute running time doesn’t allow much time for character development nor plot – but this is the art of the short feature. They have to get to the point quickly and provide a resolution of sorts. Although this is only the first of Ava Bounds’ films I’ve seen, it’s pretty obvious she has mastered this art form.
The plot deals with a teenage girl’s insecurity regarding her body and her appearance, so with the current media pressure on perfection to an unattainable degree, it’s a timely topic to cover, and it’s tackled in a way I don’t believe we’ve seen before.
Anja Cilia stars as Rachel, an ordinary teenager, in the changing room of a swimming pool. She’s anxious and hesitant to leave the changing room because she’s fixated on her appearance. She has some eczema-like skin blemishes and is self -conscious especially as the other people at the pool seem to be confidently perfect specimens.
Persuaded by her companion to jump in the pool, she takes, instead, a leap into The Twilight Zone. She doesn’t land in the water; she hits the bottom of a now mysteriously empty pool. Her companion has vanished, and she’s confronted by three physical manifestations of her body-image fears; named Zits, Hairz and Chubz.
She decides to battle them to the death.
That’s a lot of story for seven minutes, but it’s as effectively told as it can possibly be, given the time constraint. It mixes a sense of comedy with over the top action and some dance numbers. Literally, if there’s a sequence you don’t care for, wait a second and the film changes direction with something new and surprising. You don’t like machine guns, here’s an Irish jig, or Valkyries not to your taste – here’s a martial arts sequence.
As Ava Bounds says; "I made The Witches of Pool Bottom to explore the pressures of teenage body image through a darkly comic, action-packed short and my hope is that young people question impossible beauty standards. It’s a very personal story of my own teenage struggles."
With that in mind, I have to admit, although Anja Cilia gives a strong performance, I didn’t connect with Rachel as a character, but I’m not the target audience for this film being as the insecurities of a teenage girl aren’t relatable to me, a 66 year old male. But I did very much enjoy the bewilderingly fast editing and the pacing of the story, and I can appreciate that at the heart of the film is a good and valid point, well-made and wholly original.
Rob Rating = 7