Starring: Valeska Miller
Director: Aaron Fradkin
Rating: Nine of Ten Stars
A late-night rehearsal turns into a nightmare for a young dancer (Miller).
Since mid-2020, Aaron Fradkin has been putting a short horror film onto the Social House YouTube Channel every month. We came upon his excellent work while preparing for the 2020 31 Nights of Halloween, and we suspect his name will come up quite a bit during the 2021 Halloween festivities around here; his output has only gotten better over the past year. (Selections are already underway, but we start getting serious around late August.)
Fradkin released "The Ballerina" early in the month of April, and as soon as we watched it, we knew it had to be featured here on International Dance Day. (We'd already added a picture of star Valeska Miller to this year's observance at Shades of Gray, so this couldn't be more perfect!)
And speaking of perfect, there isn't a second of wasted time in this film's 8-minute running time. It stars by establishing the lonely emptiness of the dance studio late at night and continues building the tension and mystery as the horror really starts. That said, there were a few moments at about the halfway mark, where I feared Fradkin might be losing his grip on the horror-mood as I found myself increasingly reminded of a famous scene from "Duck Soup" starring the Marx Brothers... but that ultimately made the horror more intense when it exploded in full-force.
The curiously long-limbed Valeska Miller is the perfect actor for this brief excursion into weird horror, especially because she is a classically trained dancer. The genius of the casting is even clearer during the last few minutes of the film and the end credits sequence.
"The Ballerina" is almost a Ten-star film. It misses perfection only because of a special effect near the end that doesn't quite come off as well as it needs to. Otherwise, it's spot-on technically, and brilliantly performed by its star. I encourage you to take a few minutes to check it out right now, by clicking below.
And when you're done, you can visit Shades of Gray for more celebrations of dancers and International Dance Day by clicking here. You can also see more Valeska Miller by clicking here.
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