The Ellington Kid - Short Film Evaluation

The Ellington Kid follows a pair of friends who get some food at a fast-food kebab shop, as one of them tells the other about the Ellington Kid. Flashbacks depict the events as we see a kid get stabbed and hunted into the same kebab shop in which the present-day scenes occur. These flashbacks crescendo into the kebab workers preparing to face off with the gang that stabbed the kid, only to cut away, before Nathan asks Beefy "Why'd you think I only got the fries?", implying that the gang were murdered and turned into the burger that Beefy is eating. The ending is quite open, as we see the same kebab worker from the flashback staring the pair down while sharpening knives, meaning that Nathan's insistence that the story was fake could have just been to save their own skin, a shockingly dark ending.

The narrative is presented to us through Nathan's telling of the story, positioning the audience with Nathan, who we get ever closer to during the present day shots. In the flashbacks, we are shown the perspectives of the gang, the Ellington Kid, but also the kebab workers as they mount a defence. In the final shot though, we are suddenly positioned no longer with Nathan and Beefy, but with a kebab worker ominously sharpening knives, as the audience's viewpoint becomes privileged due to Nathan (possibly) not knowing about the kebab worker observing them.

The thing I like the most about this short film is the use of flashbacks to explain the present narrative. I've always found the concept of flashbacks interesting, and I've seen plenty of cases in which they serve to enhance the narrative (e.g. Inception [no I will not stop mentioning it]), but also many cases in which the flashbacks overstay their welcome and contribute little to the narrative (e.g. Bird Box), meaning that while I do want to attempt something like this, it's a make it or break it scenario.