It
is unclear whether the Aden Corporation’s motives are altruistic or maybe
slightly more sinister, but in the short run, they are the only force preventing
full-scale chaos from erupting on the streets. More precisely, it is their beleaguered
bounty-hunter who does all the hard work in Gary H. Lee’s short film Aden, which screens during the 2017 Philip K. Dick Film Festival.
Cyrus
will be doing a lot of running tonight. His mission is to secure a gifted child
from the giant killer robot on his tail. The beastly machine is invisible to
most of the people on the street, but he can see it just fine—sort of like
Roddy Piper in They Live. All those
hipster bystanders assume Cyrus is crazy, until they feel the shock waves from
its giant metal feet.
You
can tell Aden is a proof-of-concept
short, because it raises many questions about the nature of its world, but
supplies absolutely no answers. Instead, it delivers a mega-concentrated dose of
science fiction action. It is pretty amazing what kind of movie magic can be
realized in short films these days, but Lee happens to be a special effects and
animation specialist, whose credits include the Star Wars, Star Trek, and Kung
Fu Panda franchises.
As
Cyrus, Kevin Alejandro never gets a second of peace in Aden, but he is still the sort of hard-nosed, rumpled screen
presence fans will appreciate. Charles Rahi Chun, Caroline Macey, and Logan
Kishi are also completely convincing as the terrified family caught up in the
strange phenomenon afoot.
