David A. Flores’ short film Pit Stop is a modern-day allegory about the sharp division citizens of the world face today. Mary Rose Branick and Emily Sweet play a guard and prisoner, respectively, in the middle of a desolate forest road. The guard’s car has run out of gas, and the two are stuck until help arrives. The prisoner is handcuffed in the backseat and has gotten her hands on a paperclip.
When the guard returns, the two engage in a tense discussion about the prisoner Quinn’s involvement in the recent riots and how the guard, Hannah, is simply doing her job. Just as the walls between the two start to fall, the prisoner reveals she has freed herself from her cuffs and that the situation doesn’t need to worsen. Just as the guard reaches for her gun, a strange presence is felt that changes everything.

“The guard’s car has run out of gas, and the two are stuck until help arrives.”
First, Pit Stop runs fast—just over five minutes—almost too fast. The story itself takes us not too far down the road of this divide the world is living through right now, as we live in this world full of “us” and “them.” It asks the question of whether we’ve gone too far down the road to come back together. Maybe what it takes is a common threat.
Pit Stop is a fun thriller, but five minutes is just too short. It really needed to spend more time exploring its themes of division and unity, let it breathe and sink in. The same goes for the threat—it needed a bit more of an explanation about what it is and the nature of the danger it poses.