A terrifying lesson in fear: ‘Ignore It’ is short horror done right | The Haunted Column

If you've ever been told to 'just ignore it' when something unsettling happens, ‘Ignore It’ takes that advice and turns it into pure nightmare fuel. Directed by Sam Evenson, this short horror film wastes no time setting up its eerie premise, a family is being tormented by a sinister presence, and their only means of survival is to act like it doesn’t exist. Sounds simple enough. But when the entity lurking in the shadows is practically begging for attention, ignoring it becomes the hardest thing to do.

Clocking in at just under seven minutes, ‘Ignore It’ builds its horror on relentless tension rather than cheap jump scares. The film throws us straight into the family's nightmare with no exposition or backstory, just the terrifying reality they live with. The performances, especially from the child actor, feel impressively natural, making the fear all too real. The parents’ strained expressions and whispered warnings to their daughter ('Ignore it. No matter what'.) set the tone perfectly. This isn’t their first encounter with whatever is haunting them, and they know the rules. The real question is, can they follow them?

What makes ‘Ignore It’ particularly effective is its use of sound or the eerie absence of it. The suffocating silence, broken only by the entity’s unsettling movements and whisper-like noises, keeps the tension razor-sharp. The lighting is equally chilling, with dim, warm hues fading into creeping darkness as the horror unfolds. And then there's the entity itself, a grotesque, vaguely humanoid figure that seems to revel in testing its victims’ self-control. The minimal yet disturbingly effective makeup and effects prove that, in horror, less is often more.

But the true terror of ‘Ignore It’ isn’t just the creature, it’s the psychological torment it inflicts. The idea of ignoring something so obviously horrifying plays on our deepest instincts. Every fibre of your being tells you to react, to scream, to run. The final moments escalate with a sense of inevitability, culminating in an ending that lingers long after the screen fades to black.

On a deeper level, the film taps into the inescapable nature of fear itself. Sometimes, no matter how hard we try to ignore our demons, they never truly disappear. They lurk in the background, waiting for us to acknowledge them, demanding our attention when we least expect it.
Short, terrifying, and expertly crafted, ‘Ignore It’ proves that horror doesn’t need elaborate lore or excessive gore to be effective. It just needs the right idea, one that seeps under your skin and refuses to be ignored.