Absurd Encounter with Fear (1967) User Reviews

Lynch

[myownme777 · 7/10 · 4 November 2013]

OK, writing a review of a two minute short film is a challenge, hence this being the first. We see a man walking through a field of tall grass. He is walking almost zombie like, wearing normal clothes for the time and his hands and face are blue. He walks up to a woman who is sitting with her back facing him. She does not turn around but we see her face and it is painted white and she has her mouth open, lips painted red. The man stops in back of her and begins to unzip his pants. He reaches in and proceeds to pull out...weeds. At first I thought they might be dandelions because they look like yellow flowers but it is a weed called yellow hawkweed if i'm not mistaken. So he proceeds to pull out one weed after another and then he looks into the camera shocked and then falls to the ground, motionless. The girl stays stationary, having never moved. End. What does it all mean? Who cares. It's a decent two minute visual from Lynch, the second short film he did (the first being Six Figures Getting Sick, the year before) from 1967 when he was 21. When the guy unzips his pants standing over the girl, I have to admit, seeing as how it's Lynch I thought, "No. Is this guy really going to pull it out?" And because it's Lynch something unexpected would of course happen. Anyway, check out Lynch's second short film that he ever did and then watch the rest. The Alphabet comes next the following year.

Absurd Indeed

[MatthewTHuff · 5/10 · 24 November 2013]

Very unsure what is going on in David Lynch's mind during this short film, but i can say that their is a degree of symbolism and humor in it. During the first part of the short the guy/ghost/zombie/soulless character is walking through a field going past the camera. Next shot is composed of the guy slowly approaching a girl that is, what looks to be sitting in the fetal position. The girl could resemble innocence, but through the short it is hard to tell what David Lynch's motive was for these characters. The girl looks ahead the whole time in the short almost like the guy was unexpected or unnoticed.

In he next scene the guy figure is proceeding to pull out some kind of flowers out of his pants. the flowers could be dandelions, or from a previous post Yellow Hawkweed, but the motive in my opinion is this figure could be trying to take the girl figures innocence away from her. The cameraman switches to a sharp zoom out shots before the next scene, then with the man still taking the flowers out of his zipper, the cameraman makes a second sharp zoom out shot with the man staring blankly into the camera. Very dark at this pointing and the top portion of his face is dark and mysterious. He then falls to the ground in the next scene and lays there motionlessly. The camera rolls for approx twenty nine seconds and i noticed the girl figures head slowly slouched down looking hopeless.

I myself, don't know if the girls head slouching was intentional or preferably just something that happened, but the end of the short film and the music selection left me confused,uncomfortable, scared, and a little bit humorous. Overall for cheap shots and a fast scripting, i believe that this short is worth watching just for a small scare and giggles.

Lynch in 2 minutes.

[3th3rum · 7/10 · 1 December 2021]

2 minutes of intrigue, chaos and absurdity. It is difficult to say more about such a short film without writing a summary. As any viewer will notice, the key moment is when the man stands over the girl. What does it mean? I don't know at all, but it's worth watching just for the sake of seeing it. After all, this is the beginning of David's career.

Obscene, charming, shocking - typical Lynch

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 5 May 2016]

"Absurd Encounter with Fear" is a 2-minute short film that will have its 50th anniversary next year and was made by the pretty famous and prolific filmmaker David Lynch during the early years of his career. It is about what happens when a man and a woman meet in a corn field. The woman is played by David Lynch's first wife Peggy, the man is Jack Fisk, who later became a 2-time Oscar nominee in completely different fields than acting, namely for art direction and production design, also very recently on "The Revenant". So yeah, the story in this film here is not too good and Lynch did not succeed to create a memorable experience in these 120 seconds. Of course, this is also a major challenge. In terms of style, he delivers nicely as usual in terms of visuals and audio. But that is not enough to let me recommend the film. Thumbs down.

Well the fear is spot on.

[ofpsmith · 6/10 · 4 September 2019]

If you're reading this review in the first place then you've read the short IMDb summary which reads, "A man approaches a woman in a field." Good description as that is essentially what happens. Jack Fisk (David Lynch's best friend) wears a ghoulish pale white face in the vein of Carnival of Souls. He runs across a field somewhere to a girl (Peggy Lynch) sitting down. Such a premise could have gone in multiple ways. I could imagine this same scenario in a romantic way but for Lynch it's all based on fear. The pale white face paint the man wears, the music that plays, the way that he just stands over the woman after he's gone up to her. It is all very eerie. What makes it more so is how he begins pulling flowers out of his pants which couldn't be more disturbing. The film ends with Fisk looking at the camera abruptly. Given the fact that it's Lynch and how abstract it obviously is it's very open to interpretation, though I'll not use this space to explain my view on what the film means. I believe this was Lynch's second short film and it's a lot better than his first.