A young student named Alice inherits psychic abilities after falling from the balcony of her school. With her new powers, Alice begins to experiment only to find it takes a heavy toll on her body and possibly mental state.
Alice exists as an experimentation in various visual styles, often as an homage to other horror productions. This experimentation provides both the highlights and shortcoming of the production. A lot of the shots are utilized to draw you into a rather chaotic world, and add an exclamation point to the protagonists new found abilities. We get a lot of slow motion moments, switching into high speed shots, as well as use of POV style. The elements work well individually, but together become kind of busy in a way that deters from the overall appeal. There is also one moment that kind of showed the seams of the visual tricks, where several chairs are moved, with strings being visual because of the choice of slow motion. The production feels like it could have benefited from drawing back from the constant tricks to help highlight the most noteworthy moments(of which there are plenty).
The music score, really shines here, as a fan of industrial and noise music, the composition really embraces those genres in a few moments that help add to the chaos. it is also scored by some more melodic moments. Although the music does lack some complexity, given the format it was created on, it still stands as a strong note within the production, and possibly my favorite aspect in defining its style.
The performances, given it was working with a young cast, becomes difficult to scrutinize. Although at times it can be mistaken for a high-school production, and even containing a cut, that almost leads you to believe that this is a teacher working with his students on a passion project. They still do a great job, with one notable scene where a student needs to contort their face to express being attacked by psychic energy. This scene does feel somewhat intentionally comedic, but does serve well to show the amount of joy the students had in the making of the short film.
Ultimately, Alice does seem like an attempt to work in as many camera techniques as possible, and the rest of the production seems to be a bit more of an afterthought. However, the short moments that do show a keen eye for creating unique visuals, complimented by a strong score are enough to garner interest in any further productions from director Di-Ni Lidie, and acts as a wild ten minute trip of experimentation that is highly enjoyable.