Death Drive (short film) review – fascinating, haunting, enticing and scary, you won’t forget this six-minute ride in a hurry

The dream that haunted Eli-Bella Wood now haunts us, as we are left questioning this collection of vivid images and haunting sounds. Death Drive doesn’t need to provide us with answers; it merely wants us to experience the exact same thing the director did when they closed their eyes and entered the mysterious realms of dreamland.

Have you ever had a dream so vivid that the lingering memory of it stays with you for hours, days or even weeks? These types of dreams are rare but powerful, leaving a lasting impression as we attempt to decipher their meaning and purpose. For filmmaker Eli-Bella Wood, it was one of those unforgettable, yet obscure and vivid dreams that would become the basis for her Slamdance short, Death Drive—a six-minute journey into the horrors and uncertainties of the human subconscious mind.   

Death Drive requires no words, as screeching tires and haunting imagery beckon us into this contemplative, eerie, and arresting slice of experimental filmmaking. As a gun is placed in the glove compartment of a Mustang, and a woman stares at her reflection in the rearview mirror, tires screech and an engine throbs, the propulsion of the car as unavoidable as the final destination. The woman’s face isn’t the only reflection as the car speeds towards an uncertain terminus; there are other faces, young and old, accompanied only by the hum of an idle engine: ghosts from the past, or visions of what could have been in the future? There are no answers here, but there is a point at which everything stops, aspect ratios change, and silence falls, with only the thud of a horse’s hooves on tarmac to be heard. In this moment, a lone, elderly cowboy (John Scott) tips his hat and the engine cuts. Is that solitary figure death?

The dream that haunted Eli-Bella Wood now haunts us, as we are left questioning this collection of vivid images and haunting sounds. Death Drive doesn’t need to provide us with answers; it merely wants us to experience the exact same thing the director did when they closed their eyes and entered the mysterious realms of dreamland. In his poem “Darkness”, Lord Byron wrote, “I had a dream, which was not all a dream”. Death Drive is a celluloid copy of Wood’s dream that felt more like a message from the deepest, darkest depths of her subconscious mind. Fascinating, haunting, enticing and scary, you won’t forget this six-minute ride in a hurry.