After a gruesome car accident, a young woman fights her mind's 3 levels of hell to survive.

Kelsey Bollig’s Kickstart My Heart starts out with a bang! Immediately pulling the viewer into the narrative, with a particularly startling kind of jump scare, the short continually builds on that inherent tension for the rest of its 14-minute duration.

Following a gruesome accident, a young woman named Lilly has to fight for her life, on more than one level. After she wakes up in her bed, the film’s pace slows down and at first it seems like this will about a story about the aftermath of a severe injury. Only moments later do we find out what is actually at stake: Lilly will have to fight evil creatures inside an apartment that doubles as a mixture between purgatory and a sort of coping-mechanism manifested as a delusion in her own mind. Lily literally has to confront her demons, and only if she manages to overcome the frightening foes and obstacles in front of her, will she get a chance to return to reality. But does she have the necessary strength and willpower to do so?

Kickstart My Heart finds a successful balance between kick-ass action, blended with horror elements, and the necessary emotional weight to keep the story moving forward and give enough space for the characters to develop during slower passages. The camera work and quick cuts inject the necessary rhythm and intensity to put us right there, with Lilly, during the fight scenes, while the sudden flashes of x-ray shots are ravishingly effective in driving home the sense of pain the protagonist is feeling. The way Kickstart My Heart is framed and edited, the staging imitates the disorientation Lilly must feels in the desperate situation she finds herself. - S/W Curator, Georg Csarmann