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The Cabinet (2007)

By Superheidi on February 15th, 2008


Directed by Karen Lam
Produced by Karen Wong
Featuring Sonja Bennett, Julius Chapple
12 minutes, 2007

This National Screen Institute Drama Prize winning film was shot on a decent budget and is a prime example of the awesome horror filmmaking coming from Canadian female directors in the short film arena (Izabel Grondin and Ashley Fester are others). Basically, it’s a re-telling of the story of Bluebeard, it’s a very grisly fairy tale- nay – fable about why you should never ever look through your boyfriend’s stuff while he’s gone. Seriously...

I know you’ve been tempted. Like, when he’s in the shower or out to walk your dog or something... but don’t. Bluebeard may be a folk tale first, but it has a really strong message behind it: Don’t violate HIS privacy. You just might find a picture of his hot ex -girlfriend, or his strange collection of… human teeth? Like I used to say to my mom when she would go through my room when I was a teenager, “hey, don’t go looking for my pot, because you’ll likely find my pot and then you’ll be really mad”. (I ended up just replacing the pot with Oregano in a film canister. When my mother found that, she got mad. But when she found out it was Oregano, she just felt stupid. Take that, mommy!)

Lizzie is watching Michael’s house for the first time. She’s never been there before, and they’ve only been dating, like, a few weeks. They’re still getting along quite well. Mike hands Liz his set of keys, and tells her which one goes to his office, which is locked. Then, without even giving her a tour, he pecks her on the cheek and leaves. He’s very weird. He won’t even tell Liz where his meeting is, or if it is business related. Immediately insecure Liz starts thinking it’s a girl. Because, you know, that’s how women are. When she finds a picture of Emmanuelle, a really hot French chick, in amongst his belongings, she unlocks the door to his office to find out even more disappointing shit about her man.

Inside the office is a cabinet. It’s locked. However, there is conveniently another key on his desk which opens the cabinet and... Horrors! It’s got more weird crap in it! Vaguely serial killer-esque relics of his “ex-girlfriends” like teeth, etc… Now, you’d think that Liz would just run away, leave while she could. No. She stays. She stays… why? When Michael gets home, she’s sitting on the couch, giving him the silent treatment, as if to say “Michael, we’re going to have a long boring talk about our relationship! Now!” Mike easily sees that his office and cabinet have been opened. While he didn’t specifically say “don’t open them” and he did give her a key, he did say “Curiosity killed the cat”. Wonder what happens next?


Lizzie, mistrustful of her boyfriend Michael (played by Sonja Bennett)

Beautifully shot, The Cabinet is very pretty. It intersperses regular clean cinematography with snippets of shaky-ghost-scary-shit black-and-white cam (you know, like in House on Haunted Hill). The ex-girlfriends are definitely characters in the film. They almost try to warn Liz in their silent way when she’s looking in the cabinet, but to no avail.
So, what is Bluebeard really about? Is it about how you just can’t trust a chick, or is it more about how women are constantly being tested by their husbands, their families, society as a whole, and reprimanded severely for not blindly following orders? While Bluebeard himself (Michael, in the case of The Cabinet) constantly gives in to his murderous desires, his wife (Lizzie, as the girlfriend here) should be expected to do whatever he says unquestioningly on penalty of death. Not really fair, is it?
The Cabinet illustrates this problem with intensity and nice visuals, showing just enough to be frightening but not so much that we aren’t left with many many questions.
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