The Films of Nicholas Cox

Today's viral films come courtesy of StudentFilms.com, a great portal for film students and budding directors to not only showcase their work but receive immediate feedback from peers and regular joes, like me.

Sick, written, directed and produced by Nick Cox of Columbia College in Chicago, tells the tale of a young boy who's forced by his parents to live a completely sterile life. He wears a surgical mask at all times, his father tucks him to bed with a pair of elongated tongs, and he's fed from a stainless steel tray which is washed after every use with a cloth decontaminated in what looks to be a pot of boiling water. His mother becomes frantic at the smallest sign that her boy might have becomes susceptible to some disease or illness. They seem to live quite an agoraphobic lifestyle although how they pay their bills or receive their groceries is never made clear. The son becomes taken with the girl next door who he watches silently from his bedroom window which, as you might expect, becomes the catalyst for which the drama unfolds.

The film however is billed as a comedy and I can't quite picture myself referring to it as such. The characters are played with a certain lightness and a jovial jazz standard keeps the mood relatively upbeat, but their doesn't seem to be any true humor in the story, none that I connected with, at least. Perhaps humor a la Eraserhead might be a good way to describe the film's mood, albeit without the deformed monstrosity of a child.

The acting is rather poor, although this could be attributed to the melodramatic screenplay which provides characters with little dimension, development or even much to say and do. But underneath the narrative is the vague recognition of morality tale about parents who are forced to accept that they cannot protect their child forever from the horrors of the world and that he'll soon grow up and eventually leave home.

On the flip side, Mr. Cox has Doggy Style. For those who might stumble upon this late at night and think they may have stumbled across a Girls Gone Wild film will be sorely disappointed. The film, instead, is a sweet and somewhat sadistic story centering on a couple renting a country home for some rest and relaxation only to find that they're neighbors to a constantly barking dog. Claire, (Nadia Van de Ven), refuses affection from Adam (the comical Timothy Cole) until he finds a way to shut the dog up. Driven to despair, Adam is forced to take desperate measures, which may or may not upset members of PETA, depending on how you interpret Adam's ultimate intentions. As in Sick, the film lacks originality and there's no sign of any real character development that even a short film ought to reveal. Granted, overall, the two actors add enough charm to their characters to keep the story interesting which makes Doggy Style the better of the two shorts.

Two view either of the two films, click on the images above to be linked to the appropriate Quicktime file located at StudentFilms.com.