Horror Short Film “Backstroke” | ALTER 

She swimming in that murky water was more terrifying.

The mother's message at the start pulled at my heart. She had a small role in this, but she killed it. She sounded so gentle, so sorry, so concerned. It was so sad.

No I didn't want this to end. The story line is perfect. Perfect horror- thriller short I have seen in a long time. The curiosity that it builds during the communication between the girl and the creepy man was delightful. Wish this could be more longer. Far far better than watching any full length movie.

BIG SPOILER. Well my interpretation for the ending was actually that the unknown man was her guardian angel, the Voice of her consciousness, her inner voice maybe or whatever... He was standing next to the weapon so he could have harmed her from a distance if he wanted but he didn't. He warned her about the car, the danger of swimming all alone, he asked her about the school he even warned her that she was in the wrong place and almost cammanded her not to do anything stupid. He asked her to say loud out her name (once again he challenged her to decide if it was her own decision to follow jake if she was the one leading her life). Finally he asked her to come closer and then he challenged her to touch the bottom and then she started shivering so he sort of awakened her about where she was heading. She followed Jake (the bad guy), she left home, they stole a car, he taught her how to use a weapon but she obviously had second thoughts about Florida. The man warned her that Jake was already dead (meaning he was determined to follow that kind of life - cannot be saved) and couldn't hear her or save her (not from him but generally if things went wrong- he wouldn't understand her if she tried to persuade him to change). So when she stormed into the car and saw his name on the incoming call she was afraid of answering as she has taken the road back. Meanwhile the hand from behind metaphorically meant that it was ready to take action preventing her from destroying her life. That is my opinion about the short movie. It is an advice for young and restless people to always listen to their inner voice and avoid the bad influences. And sometimes its difficult to tell apart the good guy from the bad one...

All that flagging and playing around with a loaded gun was the scariest thing to me. Shit made me so uneasy when she pointed it at him.

The scariest thing is the way they handle that gun.

I'm a huge fan of this psychological approach to horror. What for me is integral to how this works as a film is the judicious use of music and silence, no 'ominous synth' noises 'guiding' the viewer into reacting 'appropriately' to what's happening on screen. To be brief, we all have the capacity to imagine, and for me this short facilitates that in a big way.

When the stranger tells her you shouldnt have come out here...chills.

I always look in my back seat before I get in my car....Always. Even when its I'm my garage.

Call me crazy but am I the only person in the world that checks their backseats as soon as I enter my vehicle EVERY SINGLE TIME I get into it?! Whether it was locked or not I have seen and heard enough horror stories to know better than NOT look lmao

why do people put their finger on the trigger when they pick up a gun??? Finger discipline! Damn.

Who else came from instagram?!

Well noted: After going for a swim check the back seats before driving off

The scariest thing was swimming in that lake... there could’ve been alligators, water moccasins, gars, alligator snapping turtles like no thank you

Number of jumpscares: *zero* This is the best horror thing I've seen in ages.

I loved how this short film used more of the sounds and silence to guide the viewer and not music. It mad eit feel more real.

who else came from shorts?

Wow. That was so creepy. You just killed every young couples fantasy about skinny dipping.

The actress, Josefine Christoffersen, is very photogenic on screen. She did a good job here and deserves a leading role in a movie.

I thought she killed Jake and she was actually talking to herself when she was talking to the man on the lake and at the end it was gonna be her mom calling and she would pick up crying and say 'Mom I did it again!'

The voice message at the beginning can be from after what had happened to them in the woods. So many teens go missing every year, and for most of them we have no clue what’s been going on.

It was frightful because even though she was out in the wide open, she was still cornered

Absolutely awesome and a true essence of horror. No jumpscares, no gore, no onscreen deaths and yet creeps you out completely.. Leaving everything ambiguous and open for interpretation is also a great move. Not to mention great acting.. Kudos!

"Do I scare you?" "No! It's okay!" **looks around for help**

She has that "it" factor they talk about in Hollywood. There's something unique about her, and the way she acts. She could definitely be the next big star.

Oh god!!!! I am addicted to this channel and it all started from the dollmaker

They should make this into a full movie. It’s really good.

Who is here after instagram Reel.😂

The scariest thing was once she got into the water almost all of her hair dye came out

The actors for these are getting better and better...

Fun fact: contrary to popular belief, backstroke is not the slowest swimming stroke. It is in fact the third fastest.

I wish this was even just a half hour. It hurts me inside because I want to see more. Incredible

That girl surely knows how to act, her acting skills were superb, she showed the right emotions, very realistic..👏👏

Oh my god him handling the gun with his finger on the trigger the whole time my anxiety was at an all time high

Great short! Good acting, good cinematography, great dialogue, not too over-the-top, and impressively eery antagonist. 8/10!

That good Samaritan not only saved her from an abduction beyond states lines, but took action to prevent her very unsafe use of a cell phone while driving.

This was one of the most unnerving movies I’ve seen in a LONG time! Absolutely brilliant!

Spoiler alert...... I was really scared when that guy started asking weird questions. Kind of similar situation I had to face on a school trip. Terrifying.

You can tell that water was freezing. She did a great job converting the cold shivers to fear shivers. Hopefully they were able to do this in one take!

Relax, I'm a professional... This is what a short is supposed to look like. Great acting, great audio, and the cameramans angles were superb, 4 out 5 stars!!

Guy: why aren't you at school? Me: excuse me I'm trying to self isolate April 2020?

The actress nailed it. This is dope

The shot of the spider was soooo well done. Such a nice little touch seeing as how she fell right into his trap like a spider we catches prey

I thought it was going in the direction of him basically keeping her in the water through psychological force alone. Swimming and swimming, getting more and more tired, terrified of getting out to face him. Frantic breaststroke giving way to backstroke to conserve strength. Swimming and swimming, from one end to the other as it gets darker and colder. I thought the whole "1-2 people drown here every year" thing was a perfect setup for that.

as a person that knows a little about guns/weapons. i can say that person doesn’t know how to manage one (or maybe the character) you never have to point anyone even if it’s not loaded!!

This is a good one, Alter. Thanks for sharing this! In the end scene, showing Jake calling her, helped piece it together for me because it shows that he is alive and the creepy dude lied to lure her to the car and it shows that it isn't Jake in the car since he is calling her. Simple, but very eerie. The sound effects were also perfect with creating such a creepy atmosphere.

This reminds me of an experience my mom and I had in the Virgin Islands. We drove around for hours looking for a deserted beach. We finally found one surrounded by dense forest. We were having a great time swimming, when suddenly a man appears out of nowhere. He just stood there staring and didn’t acknowledge us when we spoke to him. This went on for a few minutes. He stared the whole time and not a single word came from his mouth. We decided to get out, grab our things and ran back to our car as fast as possible. On the way back, we noticed a towel and sandals laying in the middle of nowhere with no one in sight. Thankfully, we made it back to the car, but I’ve never been so scared. We still talk about it to this day, but will never really know what was going on there. I’ll never forget that cold, lifeless stare and his complete silence. We do realize now that what we did was REALLY stupid.

This!!!! This was the most nauseating, face numbing, stomach sinking fear I've felt in a while. Wonderfully written actors did an amazing job. I WOULD LOVE TO SEE THIS AS AN ENTIRE MOVIE. The concept is every girls worst nightmare

Anyone who came here after watching it on instagram reels?

Does anyone actually ever get in a car and not notice someone in the back seat?

I knew the end and it was good. All you have to do to make any guy look creepy is have the shirt buttoned to the top. I would never just jump into some pond.

Better than most of the movies nowadays…

This was pretty good. The acting was better than some commercial movies.

That feeling of being a woman aloine being stalked and hurt. I hate it. True horror and I can feel it to my bone. Thank you!

I think she killed Jake and is having a mental breakdown. The creepy guy is in her mind or her way of coping with killing her best friend. Notice that she was leaving you didn't see the gun anymore

How I know this guy is a liar, when he said Scout's Honor he only held up 2 fingers.

I was impressed by this short film. It was all her imagination. None of it happen, the man or her friend were never there. She ran away from home, ended up in a secluded place and freaked out. The call at the end, was the truth. Good stuff. New sub.

8:03 Craziest line in the movie

The scariest thing is swimming naked in a lake with out knowing what’s inside and then a scary man or any man comes up to you

I loved the dialogue in the lake. That was disturbing

I was all for skinny dipping, alone, in the middle of nowhere, in a creepy hick forest, until this killed it for me.

The scariest thing was him literally having his finger on the trigger the whole entire time he pulled the gun out

What if the man hides the bodies underwater and that's why he told her to try and touch the bottom so she would feel the bodies. That's literally the first thing i tought of lol

The scariest thing is how they both handle a firearm 😂

I'm more scared of the part where she jumps into that murky lake without any second thoughts. You know there are lot of crocs/alligators in these kind of waters. Everything in this short film keeps you gripped. Excellent

Josefine Christoffersen, "Amber", needs more rolls! She is Gorgeous and such a Fine Actress!!

when he said "don't be stupid" feels like a dad warning his daughter. it changed my view of how creepy he was 😭

This might be my favorite Alter short. The guy playing the psychopath is stellar.

I wonder if the mom calling to begin with was about Jake being dead & she was just trying to escape the reality of her situation. But then the creepy guy woke her up because when she felt scared and needed her friend he wasn’t there.

That lake guy looks like the devil. Really good cast

It looks way too cold for a swim

One of the best so far that I have seen and I have seen a few. Congrats!!

I think that she killed her boyfriend, then drowned in the lake. When the man appears, it is her subconcious or death telling what she has done before her desth and then when she in the car, it is her soul leaving her body. Plus when the hand grabs her hair, it is something like a demon or the devil dragging her to hell to condemn her to torture for what she has done. But think what you think, just giving people a view of what I think it is.

Wow! This is amazing! The sheer vulnerability she’s put in by being in the water... I can’t imagine. So good

The part where the white guy was talking so creepily to the girl scared the crap out of me. This was very-well made.

7:20 it reached peak creepiness

I cant be the only one who thought she was finna be eaten by a aligator and when he disappeared i thought he was gonna grab her head and drown her.

That couple had no chemistry

This was all her imagination. She accidentally shot her boyfriend, took a swim to get the blood off her, and the hand reaching from behind is her boyfriend. It's bloody

I despise movies that end like this but for some reason it really worked here. Was Jake alive and really calling her, and if she had looked for him and found him, the killer wouldn’t have gotten her while in the car? Was the killer just using Jake’s phone to call her? So May questions.

Yup It's named "short film", yet if you could make it further extended, all shows go way beyond absolute great.

The young woman is very beautiful! The short film was nice! Hello from Athens Greece!

Omg what happened? Is there a message or meaning behind it? Or some kind of plot twist?

Great short. Good actors and a good story that holds totally the attention. Love this channel!

Crazy! Its one of those times when they tell you what's going on and yet, you're still unsure. Loved the acting, the edit and the music

Everyone : the lake😮 Me: weapon sAfYEy🤯🫠😨😰🫣🫠

Love the shot where you see the spider as she runs back to the car.

nope - no-one ever looks in the backseat when they are paranoid -

Him : come closer Me : hell nahh

I'm going to create a major film production company for independent filmmakers. These Alter stories are better than most of Hollywood's horror stories 😆

great acting from the actor playing the creepy guy . The way he talks, his facial expression........a perfect psychopath.

Anyone else feel like this would make a decent Netflix series?

Pretty standard horror movie cliché - the killer in the backseat 😂

2:52 I moved the screen a bit tilted away from my face so that if this was some witchcraft and the bullet came to me through the screen it would hit my bedroom wall😂😂😂

8:42 "Don't be stupid"... ...Too late.

Nicely done. That actress was great.

"Every year, one or two people drown here and they're usually swimming by themselves" he meant "and i usually kill them".

I just had an anxiety attack! Thanks Alter! Lol! I kept moving my phone away from my face but kept it where I could still see.. Lmao! ❤️

This has been one of my favorites so far Definitely had a very creepy real vibe to it keep up the good work. Fine group of actors

Horror movie rule book: Always check the backseat.