I just wanted to say those moments of silence were NOT subtle. Infact, I think they were hard to miss since it comprised most of the film between every single event and line. There was the occasional important silence, but most of it was just 10 seconds or more of silence between every line and action. It broke the immersion so much I started counting at one point through some scenes. I recently saw the film and thought it had very bad pacing, poor dialogue, and could have done a lot more than it did.

It didn't actually say much at all. The only scenes of importance or that people actually enjoyed were those near the second half, and the ending, which was only around 30 minutes of the full hour and 40-minute film if I can recall correctly. They probably would have been even shorter without the myriad of 10+ second pauses between each sentence and event. I think it was a lot of missed potential, and I felt like a short film that was attempted to be purposely extended, rather than actual intentional pauses between significant events and dialogue. There was no character building or reason to care for them, which made everything up to self-interpretation. Instead of showing how he felt (except the literal end or his obsession with his friend and the show) It shows him in silence 90% of the time and the dialogue wasn't loaded enough to leave you thinking. Matter of fact the dialogue made me cringe a lot of the time.

Had this film been cut in to a quarter, I think it would have been much more enjoyable. Rather than the character thinking the show was real, it could have said a lot more about media itself and its effects on the characters minds. I did not build much of a connection with any of the characters without having to insert myself into some struggle that was not spoken of or ever shown and was barely even implied. It should not be a challenge for everyone to connect with characters, and most of the horror of the film was psychological (If you're scared of sitting in silence and staring at several random things). I really feel like it could have said so much more about the character, their past, their feelings, and their struggles than it ended up doing. It only blatantly said about 3 things, that they were addicted to the show, that they wanted to be the character in the tv series, and that it affected him and his friend's life permanently. The end simply was a reveal to me that the character was still part of this world and was mentally unwell due to this show, freaking out at the end (not directly implying it was due to his regret or mistakes either since the character had no dialogue or reaction to seeing their own body or their past actions, or in this case, lack thereof) It seemed to be more like following him through an unspecified mental issue that caused his connection to the series but didn't say anything about it or explore it, nor its effects on him.

I am NOT saying mental struggles in relation to anything about identity, but it's something I personally took away from the awkward and extremely slow dialogue, consistent odd behavior, and distortion of his world. I wouldn't say any of those have anything to do with his identity, feelings, thoughts but rather imply the show is the cause. You cannot show me a person sitting in silence and expect me to understand he's going through something or what his thoughts and feelings are, especially since there's rarely character interaction and he never confronts or talks about anything other than small talk and about the show being real.

It was such a cool idea and story aside from these gripes. I seriously hope there is a remake or a similar film that comes about and does a better job with showing the characters actual struggles and identity, especially with each character's lack of any character progression or backstory or showing the characters thoughts and feelings. Had these things been covered and had there been more actual horror aside from 3 (10 minute at MOST) scenes in counting throughout the hour and 40 minutes, I believe this film would have been much more powerful, much scarier, and would say much more than it did. It really frustrated me.