This woman returns home one day, picks up her mail from behind the front door and tries to settle, but that feeling that she is not alone begins to surface once again. She has been experiencing these thoughts for a while now and has sought psychiatric help, but her doctor tells her not to worry and it's all in her mind. Now that she accepts that she can move on, even if those feelings still linger...
Someone Else was a tiny budget, shot on video short, barely lasting four minutes and that's including the credits, which took a dark look at paranoia in its "doesn't mean they're not out to get you" plotting. Not that there's an awful lot of plotting you can get through in this amount of time, and the work does resemble a trailer for something more lengthy, but writer and director Andrew Newall at least exhibited some skill with the resources he had on offer to him, and the actors didn't bump into the scenery.
That plot is simplicity itself, resting on the basic fear that if you're alone in your home at night, there might be someone hiding in there with you even if common sense tells you there isn't, although the central character has grounds for believing this in that she suspects objects have been moved when she's not present. Why didn't she got to the police? Maybe she did and they sent her to the psychiatrist, it's difficult to tell as there's very little explained.
The vague sense of unease is brought to a head for what for most films would be the finale, but here works as the middle as well, this being so brief. If this makes you think twice the next time you are on your own in your home, then the film will have done its job, but it would have better to have more to it for the viewer to get their teeth into, especially as the plot could be related in one sentence without missing much out. Judging it on its own terms, though, it's a success, and the fact that it doesn't hang about could be seen as a virtue.
