Directed by Wen-Ming “Joe” Hsieh, the look of this film feels like a strange sketchbook come to life. A businessman is stuck in a small town after the last ferry has left, so he walks to a hotel. There are no vacancies, but the manager feels badly and allows him to sleep in a storage closet that has a bed. He’s warned not to disturb the person in the next room.

That person is the manager’s daughter, who overnight falls in love with the man, who simply wants to make love and go back to his wife. When I was younger, I used to read Penthouse Forum and wonder how these things happened to the writers of the letters, which I know today are untrue. That’s because they’re all written without the actual reality of emotions. People can fall in love instantly and often, those people will seek supernatural revenge on you, so the moments are carnal bliss that you quickly pumped away will end up with you dead on the bottom of a river. Or at least coming close, but then as you may know — I hope only from folk horror films — that someone isn’t going to give up on getting their revenge just because you got away once.

This was amazing.

The Present is part of the new Severin box set, All the Haunts Be Ours Volume 2.

You can order this set from Severin.