Every day during October, the Department of Tangents presents a different short film for the Daily Horror Film Fest. It can be flat-out scary, funny horror, or a little twisty. Today’s selection is The Monster, written and directed by Robin Whitten, who also has a small on-screen role. That’s him as Passenger One, the creepy guy with the camera phone on the subway.

Hard to talk about this one with giving too much away, so I won’t say much about the plot. I am still asking questions about how the first half and the second half of the film fit together; how the first half sets up the second and what it says about the lead female character. I would love to see more films with her that broaden her world and her backstory.

Whitten is a talented horror director. He knows how to show audiences just a glimpse of something and make them fill in the spaces and scare themselves, and he can do a lot with some basic lighting and just a couple of well-placed special effects. On his Web site, he writes of The Monster, “The film intentionally tries to challenge some of the more common and predictable horror clichés.” Well done, sir.