Love story. Horror story.
Oscillations lures us into the sweetest, darkest core of the heart and mind, where evil is unseen and love is long lost. In a turbulent void left when two souls are severed, three young people gasp for balance and clarity. In time, the forces and tides of darkness are felt physically, threatening to consume even the most innocent of them all.
Drawing from classic cinematography and the innovators of horror in Japan, this multidimensional film was produced with the smallest of budgets, yet with a wealth of ingenuity. The sometimes haunting, sometimes visceral soundtrack leads us into the darkness, and whatever lies beyond.
Love has a frequency. Loss has no words.
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"Audiences can be pretty accepting of song lyrics they don’t quite understand, or viewing an abstract painting; but when it comes to film, they want answers. Perhaps it’s because film is the medium that most closely resembles “real life.” What these gift-wrapped-ending seekers neglect is that real life is a mess — I’ve never weathered a relationship that ended tied up in a neat bow (more like five minutes after Christmas morning, torn wrapping paper everywhere). Oscillations, a short film written and directed by Evan Blakely and featuring music by Kyle Harvey, incorporates realism even as it “zig-zags between what is perceived as a visual narrative and what might be nightmare sequences,” according to production designer Stephen Sheehan. If you want to escape and go numb, see the latest Cineplex crap-fest, but if you want to see something that may be unwieldy but will certainly make you feel, support this local film."
— Sarah Wengert, The Reader
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"The most creative short, the only one to really push the medium, while pushing the buttons of its audience, was 'Oscillations.' Too many viewers did not appreciate or understand its poetic mise en scene or structure and thus wrote it off, suggesting two things: one, the need for a [possible] experimental video/film art category and two, a session on film appreciation and criticism for all."
- Michael Krainak, The City Weekly, on Oscillations in the Omaha Film Festival
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"I saw a screening of the film at the Omaha Film Festival a month or so ago as part of the festival's "short film block," the quality of which was, well, gratingly bad -- except for Oscillations, which was something of a mind-fuck. Don't ask me what the movie's about, I don't know. It's essentially a smear of iconic visuals and sharp, nested images that echo with isolation and unease. It's weird in a David Lynch sort of way, but without Lynch's dark irony. In that context, it probably has more in common with the work of another David -- David Fincher. There's no dialogue, just music and atmospheric tonescapes. Not surprisingly, Oscillations didn't take home any honors at OFF, but that's not stopping Blakley from entering the film into other festivals around the country."
- Tim McMahan, lazy-i
