Worm is a Short That Can Only be Described as Disturbingly Relatable.
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Worm explores a big question; Everyone's has bad days at the office, but what do you become when those things eat away at your very sanity?
Written by James "Crypticpsych" Lasome
February 11, 2011
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Release: 2010 (Various Film Festivals)
Directed by: Richard Powell
Written by: Richard Powell
Starring:
Robert Nolan as Geoffrey Dodd
Samantha Nemeth as Lillian
Kimberly Curran as Patricia
Geoffrey Oswald Dodd (Nolan) is, to the naked eye, your average high school teacher. He wants to write a novel in his spare time and gives pop quizzes like every other teacher… on the surface. Inside his head, though, lives a disturbed sociopath. He's the kind of man who takes sadistic pleasure in delivering miserable grades to his students (even purposely downgrading a perfect paper) and wishing they were dead or had been abortion victims. Throughout his day, his actual words may be natural, normal, even kind. His internal monologue, however, is violent, deeply hurtful, depraved, wrathful, angry and profane. While he may say he wants to hear what's going on in your family, he really is wishing you nothing but pain and misery in his head. As his day goes on, his inner anguish and misery grows greater and more intense. Will something restrain him before his dark side overtakes him, leaving him no way to turn back?
To a certain extent, there's always some little thing people don't like about their jobs. Maybe their coworkers backstab them, maybe they feel surrounded by incompetence, maybe they get passed up for promotions. When that happens long enough, we all have some form of violent hateful thought. If it's severe enough, it might last you a fair amount of time, but, chances are, you'll come down at some point. Usually, if the condition continues long enough, for days on end, it can drive you insane unless you find some way out.
The thing that makes Worm compelling is that Nolan's Dodd NEVER comes down. To the viewer's eye, next to nothing in his day should lead him to have the thoughts he's having. From the moment he walks in the building in the morning, he's so full of bitter hatred that it almost seems his day's lost simply because he woke up. Nolan's performance drives this short. His "everyman" look makes the sociopathic inner monologue that much�more disturbing. Given that he's either physically onscreen or his voice is heard pretty much every moment, nailing down this character is�essential. His
best work in Worm comes when you can see his eyes and face while hearing his thoughts. It takes a very skilled actor to play,�facially, the emotions they're supposed to be thinking in their heads and have them match believably, but Nolan seems to be more than up to the challenge here.
Richard Powell and his crew should also be commended for effective camera work and well-done music and sound design, two areas where so many indie filmmakers fail. Every shot is lit well and the entire short feels professional to say the least. The script, for the most part, is also top notch. One of the most fascinating things about it is that it seemed like�there was no end to the variety of despicable things Dodd thought over the course of the day. Worm would be boring if he was only thinking various interpretations of the same thought. Instead, the script
continually gives him new, viler insults and invectives to spew in his head, leaving the viewer on the edge of their seat wondering what he might do or say next. In addition, looking at the IMDB after watching, I'd be remiss to not mention that one of the taglines for this short is "A Day�in the Mind of G.O.D.". The mere possibility that this film was also an allegory for Richard Powell's perception of how a supreme deity would see his creations after all their flaws, miscues, and screw-ups never occurred to me while watching yet makes perfect sense looking back and makes the overall story that much more rich.
Worm does have one major problem though. Shortly before its end, Powell brings an element of an inappropriate teacher-student relationship into the story. Given everything else we've seen in this short, there's next to no reason for it to exist. The viewer's never told clearly why�Dodd suddenly feels this way about this particular person or what makes them different from everyone else; apparently something just "clicks" in his head when he sees them. Supposedly, an intricately-designed envelope seen in this scene contains an actual letter that describes how he feels, but not actually showing us the letter is a missed opportunity for more insight into an engaging character.
Worm is easily one of the better short films I've seen. The concept, on whatever small level, is universally relatable, professionally-handled, and well-acted. I only wish the buildup to the climax didn't shift tone so hard, momentarily breaking the tension it had worked so hard to build. I would have probably rated Worm higher otherwise. Either way, it's well worth the time to hunt down this great chronicle of a total internal psychotic break in an outwardly normal man.
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