An apocalyptic world. A devastated city. One last survivor.
Edgar has learned to survive on his own avoiding contaminated areas by the “incident” which destroyed life as we knew it.
But Edgar’s routine is suddenly disrupted by the discovery of a wall with graffitis by his bed. Just one word reveals the presence of another survivor: “Anna”

It is so damn hard to review Short Films for me. I mean, it’s by and large fun to watch them. The challenge lies in trying to generate a lot to say about not a lot of movie.

Such is the case with the half-hour short “Graffiti”. First of all, this is a production that extends a good ten minutes beyond what is reasonably requisite in order to effectively tell the story here. That narrative being a guy who is not certain if he is the last human on earth seven years after an apocalyptic “incident”, apparently of a catastrophically nuclear nature.

Director and Co-Writer/Producer Lluís Quílez gives us far to many shots establishing that this despondent and solitary man, Edgar (Oriol Pla, resembling a young John Stamos, who himself resembles the actual present-day John Stamos), has been sentenced to an existence of desperately lonely and empty days. And the somber mood generated by Arnau Bataller’s morose musical accompaniment supplies a more than sufficient cue that we as an audience should be filled to overflowing with feelings saturated with the somber and serious. Edgar is continuously shown bearing the brunt of another brutally harsh winter entrapped within a completely gutted and empty city while trudging about in a joyless effort to determine if the radiation levels in the dilapidated structures threatening to crumble down on top of him are safe for entry (Pripyat, the Ukrainian city most egregiously impacted by the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown crisis of 1986, provides the primary setting). After a few of these grimly stark scenes we do come to get it, Mr. Quílez. Edgar’s life is the total shits and there is little hope that it’s ever gonna get any better. In fact, it’s an absolute wonder that this poor fellow is even still motivated to remain clinging to life at all, such as it is. Which I suppose touches on the apparent theme of the innately powerful longing for human touch alive in us all. But still, there’s really no point in beating the set-up to this eternal truth to death, is there?

So as not to potentially spoil what I found to be a nearly entirely nonsensical and unsatisfying denouement, suffice to say that Edgar may or may not have discovered a reason to carry on.

But by this time “Graffiti” has carried on for far longer than has our inspiration to truly care.