Horror Short Review: The Mannequin (2020)

For anyone who watches a lot of horror, in particular shorts, there isn’t much particularly appealing about Kévin Mendiboure’s The Mannequin. Simply because, if you’re like me, this idea has been done to death in both long and short form. It would take something pretty special to impress. So the big question is…does Mannequin impress?

Alexia (Alexia Zahedi) is home alone awaiting for the return of her boyfriend who is at work. We find this out when she pops to the toilet and texts him after passing a full body mannequin she keeps in the hallway.

While in the toilet, the lights go out and thus the scares begin. It’s simple at first, noises and something being knocked off the shelf outside. She carefully goes to investigate and is startled by the mannequin’s position having changed. Running back into the toilet, she locks the door as the handle is tried over and over again.

Her terror sends her into a head spin and then the noise stops and the lights come back on. Feeling reassured by that (no matter how old we get, there’s always something about the dark) she goes out and finds everything as it was.

Carrying on with her evening, she poses for a picture and sends it to her boyfriend and then the lights go out again. If you want to know what happens next, you’ll have to watch it yourself below.

Is it worth it? Absolutely. It creates enough hair-raising moments to frighten many. It’s super-ambiguous but being a short (less then 4 minutes long) that works in its favour. We don’t need a long story here, just give us an outline and line up the frights!

You could lament the lack of originality here but you’d be doing that for all modern horror now. Everything’s been done (pretty much) so all we can hope for is quality re-tellings or versions that excite, intrigue and most of all, scare. That’s something The Mannequin does.