By Terry Sherwood
Not every uncomfortable situation is a horror film but some, like in the short film Disc, come close. Writer-director Blake Winston Rice’s observed look that turns the morning after a one-night stand into a study in human awkwardness, guilt, and connection. It’s not a horror story in the sense of genre more of a ‘period Drama’ The awkward situation some of us have either been in or imagined—waking up next to someone you barely know and realizing that daylight has stripped away all glamour. Yet rather than cruelty or judgment, Disc finds humor, tenderness, and surprising sweetness in that moment.
At just under twenty minutes, the film captures something rarely seen on screen with such authenticity: the uneasy mixture of intimacy and estrangement that lingers after casual sex. It’s funny, uncomfortable, stressful, and unexpectedly touching all at once. Blake Rice, along with co-writer and star Victoria Ratermanis, approaches the material with honesty and a finely tuned sense of comedic rhythm.
The premises are beautifully simple. Two coworkers at a convention wake up in bed together after a conference hookup. They are disheveled, disoriented, and half-dressed. Instead of leaning into humiliation or farce, Disc lets the situation unfold naturally, almost in real time. The awkward pauses, the missed, the covering up even though on has been naked along with the conversational cues, and the forced politeness gradually give way to something deeper: recognition that both characters are searching for something more than they’re ready to admit.
Victoria Ratermanis and Jim Cummings are lovely together; their chemistry is human and fragile. What makes their pairing so watchable is that it never feels staged; every laugh, every hesitation seems spontaneous. Cummings brings a nervous energy and vulnerability, while Ratermanis grounds the film with subtle humor and quiet emotional intelligence and some crushing eroticism. Together, they make the unbearable bearable
Rice’s direction is economical but deeply attuned to performance. His camera rarely strays far from the actors, giving the audience an almost voyeuristic look but never exploitive. He knows how long to let a silence linger, when to cut, when to hold a close-up just past the point of comfort. The result is a tone that feels both comic and painfully real. This is humor born from recognition, and necessity
It’s a small story, but it ripples with implications about consent, power, and emotional accountability in a culture that treats intimacy as casual. What elevates Disc beyond the average short comedy is its refusal to simplify those tensions. The cleaning staff pounding on the door trying to get in and the priceless Jim Cummings explanation to the hired help are seamless Instead, it embraces contradiction: it’s about connection and alienation, humor and humiliation, desire and regret, all swirling in a messy morning and the heartbreak of goodbye wave and subtle smile.
Technically, the film is clean with brilliant use of extreme closeups especially in the beginning. The cinematography has a soft, natural look that suits its realism; The nudity more showing of necessary skin with Victoria Ratermanis standing ready for Jim Cumming’s “help’ looked similar to as slightly awkward Sydney Sweeney standing before Ben hardy in The Voyeurs. The important distinction is that Disc is not glamour, it’s real. One of the best line from Jim Cumming showing male naivety is ‘Do you save it? “The sound design subtly underscores the silences that hang in the air like unspoken thoughts.
Disc is that it feels longer than it is not because it drags, but because it lingers. You want to stay with these two characters, to see what might happen next, Disc isn’t about a one-night stand gone wrong it’s about how, in the right hands, even a regrettable morning can become a moment of revelation and dream of ‘perhaps in another time”.
Disc screened as part of the Toronto International Film Festival 2025.
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