Bingo Man

Bingo Man – TMFF Review Imagination can be frighteningly real. There is something that we would like to talk about, and that is the difference between Terror and Horror. While horror is usually the result of witnessing a scary situation, terror is more subtle and it´s usually generated from the absence of stimuli than from an overload of it. While you could say that horror deals with mutilation, torture and other gruesome imagery, terror deals with darkness, muffled sounds, small movements and other soft elements that allow our brains to fill in the gaps with our worst fears. Many a movie nowadays resorts to cheap horror, there are whole franchises built around the always shocking body horror, for example the “SAW” movies. But real terror is something much more difficult to achieve. W will now analyze one short script that attempts to recreate some of that primal terror of feeling alone and in danger. But, did it accomplish it? With a deceptively funny name, „Bingo Man‟ is a story about a young girl, Kelly, living in a difficult environment. Her father has been sent to jail and her mother is absentminded and a workaholic, and as a response to fulfill a deep need for attention she has seemingly created the figure of the eponymous Bingo Man. This is an imaginary friend that accompanies her everywhere and provides all the attention and reassurance that she desperately craves. Her mother notices this behavior, which is a little odd for someone of Kelly´s age, and still pays no mind to it, she doesn´t even consider taking Kelly to therapy to help her deal with the loss of her father, or any other kind of supportive action, this bad mother just allows her daughters psyche to run amok. This in itself is already dangerous, but the turn the story takes will be more blood chilling than anything you can imagine. A couple of girls in the neighborhood have disappeared recently, and apparently Kelly is the next target, the worst part is that even in this dire situation she can only count on Bingo Man for help. We don´t want to spoil much more of the script, but we can say that you will be left shocked at a certain reveal and by the end you´ll start to doubt if Bingo Man is truly an imaginary friend or perhaps even a physical entity. The script is very short but the author uses those few pages in a masterful way to convey many important things. In just 15 pages we see some character progression, we plunge into the darkness of true terror and are left there, just wondering what really lies in the dark, and on top of that we get a powerful message of the dangers of neglecting our children. The dialogue in the script can be considered a bit childish, but this is justified once you consider that we´re experiencing the story mainly through Kelly´s POV, and in this case it works even better, because the script doesn´t rely on deep phrases or long speeches, but rather on raw emotion in order to connect the readers with the character. In the end what you get is a truly terrifying story that won´t take long to read, or watch once it becomes a short film, and will still make you feel perturbed as it intended. If you are fan of terror and deep emotions, „Bingo Man‟ won´t disappoint you in any way. Go read it!