The short movie THE EVE by Luca Mechanic opens by informing that "the dream and hallucination colors are based on Max Lusher’s theory of psychological meanings of colors".
The color test invented by Max Luscher in 1949 is based on the assumption that the preference shown towards each color and the reactions that this provokes in the subject change according to individuals and moments. The test contains eight colors: the 4 basic colors (red, yellow, green, and blue) and 4 auxiliary colors (purple, brown, gray, and black).
Used by psychologists, teachers, and doctors, the Lüscher test can be used by everyone with excellent results.
This means that we know from the very beginning that this horror movie is going to be set on the psychological patterns.
The film begins with the opening credits alternated with images shot in a mall during the Christmas holidays (symbol of contemporary consumerism). The camera runs through the mall very quickly and stops only in front of an antique cuckoo clock held by a child's hands. The clock keeps time until it falls and breaks. Then again the mall, the presents, and on contrast the hands of a child who writes a letter to Santa Claus.
The soundtrack here has childish and fairytale sounds until the director takes us inside the child's house where something starts to be off as the Christmas balls that roll from the tree towards us suggest, providing foreshadowing an idea of danger and chain reaction (very nice close-up of one of the Christmas balls which, taking possession of the whole field of view, resembles a planet).
From the shopping center, we get to the house. From the outside, we arrive inside, from the appearance to the substance. All the good intentions of a magical Christmas are sucked into reality, an unhappy reality that pushes the child to take refuge in a dream, where Santa Claus arrives to tear him away from the pain and take him into a world of toys and serenity.
The colors follow the feelings of the protagonists and act as a true soundtrack. The stark contrast between the bright, decked house that is shown from the outside and the blurred and almost confused colors that characterize the interior of the house is used as the visual aspect of the film's theme. Once inside, unrest is felt. The characters seem deliberately little involved in the story, almost wanting to represent that the problem of domestic unhappiness is universal. The actors are then more storytellers than interpreters as if the house they are in were everybody's home. Because everyone, from the outside, apparently seems happy. But inside?
Beautiful special effects and illustrations and good all the technical departments directed by Luca Machnich that did a great job on his first-time director work.