Fever by Isabella Nemcik – Calling in sick

More young adults live with their parents now than in any previous generation. A Bowling Green State University study from 2024 showed that the number of 18-24 year olds living “at home” spiked above 60% during COVID. The causes, pros, and cons of these arrangements are hotly debated, but it’s not hard to imagine the feeling of entrapment during those quarantine years especially: Just as your adult journey should be starting, your metaphorical butterfly wings sprouting, you wake up every morning reading apocalyptic headlines, stuck in the same rooms with the same people you spent your entire youth.

Isabella Nemcik’s evocative, Lynchian horror-satire short Fever captures this terror. Its title is a play on both “cabin fever” and “fever dream,” and the story feels like both. Ziggy is locked into a house with his parents, who are laden with garish prosthetics and clown makeup like their skin is diseased and melting. Everything in the house looks a little bit off: The coloring is like Edward Scissorhands was left out in the sun and started growing fungus; the labels on products are replaced with a big black X; and Ziggy’s parents insist on spoon-feeding him yellow goop for every meal of the day.

Ziggy himself, played by Mikey Frusci, has a stylish haircut and pierced ears, suggesting he’s glimpsed life outside of cloistered, conservative suburbia. Frusci has a congenial and outgoing look, like he’s someone you’d befriend at a kombucha bar in Brooklyn, and yet he’s stuck in his bedroom, complete with posters, linens, and high school-assigned paperbacks from the 1980s. He’s locked up in an asylum, with flickering lights and elliptical time jumps putting him and the viewer ill at ease.

The heart of Ziggy’s conflict is a fading connection with Orson, an off-screen companion we infer to be a lover or, at a minimum, a cipher for intimate connection. But Orson won’t pick up the phone, and this is the last straw for Ziggy, sending the film into the body horror freakout that makes up most of the short’s second half.

As Ziggy’s reality breaks down, Nemcik offers us unsettling images: toothpaste-like-gunk guzzled from a tube; Ziggy peeling off a layer of his skin like he had bad sunburn a week ago; and a sex dream of sorts in which he is pinned down and caressed by a shadow version of himself. Nemcik constructs this sequence with terrific, queasy uncanniness, evoking the most skin-crawling sequences of Mulholland Drive or Suspiria.

The film’s final moment suggests a reprieve from the crushing conformity and boredom of being stuck alone and in a rut, if only we can be brave enough to take a leap and run away. It’s a thoughtful and cathartic finale that prevents the short from going out as too much of a bleak nightmare.

Fever is terrifically assembled by its crew: Bryce Hinschberger’s editing keeps the film electric and unsettling in its rhythm from start to finish. The prosthetic makeup is presumably the work of credited SFX makeup artist Angelina Mongiovi in collaboration with production designer Amal Quershi and art director Isabela De La Grana, and it really offers a horrifying signature image for the film. The peeling skin effect is upsetting in a good way, too. The cinematography by David Luna is a mix of claustrophobic and disorienting, with a slightly washed out look accented by the outstanding, bilious coloring by Hang Nguyen. Nemcik is credited as the sound designer as well as the director and writer, and she and composer Zalman Zuckerbraun offer a gnawing, cursed feeling to Fever.

The cast is quite good, too. Mikey Frusci carries the brunt of the film as Ziggy, and it’s a fearless turn that really captures his slide to insanity. Erika Stone and Robert Stuart are wonderfully guileless as Ziggy’s monster-parents, too.

Isabella Nemcik is a name to watch. She offers a signature, bold declaration of style in Fever. I look forward to seeing what she does next, especially if she gets the chance to apply her eye for surreality, twisting the seemingly harmless into nightmare fuel, to a feature length project.

Fever (13 min) is streaming for free on NoBudge and YouTube.

Fever is written and directed by Isabella Nemcik, a filmmaker based in New York City. You can find her website here.

Crew credits include Bryce Hinschberger as editor, David Luna as cinematographer, Amal Quershi as production designer, Isabela De La Grana as art director, and Hang Nguyen as colorist. Cast includes Mikey Frusci as Ziggy, Erika Stone as Mother, and Robert Stuart as father.

Dan Stalcup is the film critic for The New Cinephile and The Goods. Reach him at dan.stalcup@gmail.com.