''Nightwalking'' (also known as ''Night Walking'') is a 2008 British comedy horror short film directed by Daniel Cormack, starring

Raquel Cassidy Raquel Cassidy is an English actress. She played the role of Phyllis Baxter in the television series ''Downton Abbey'' (2013–2015), winning a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series. She has re ...

and

Lloyd Woolf Lloyd Woolf (born 1981) is a British comedy actor and writer from Swansea, Wales. Personal life Woolf was born in 1981 in Swansea, and grew up in the Swansea Valley town of Pontardawe. After graduating with an English degree from Cambridge Univer ...

. In 2010, ''Nightwalking'' was selected for preservation by the

British Film Institute's The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves Cinema of the United Kingdom, filmmaking and Television in the United Kingdom, television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds ...

National Archive National archives are the archives of a country. The concept evolved in various nations at the dawn of modernity based on the impact of nationalism upon bureaucratic processes of paperwork retention. Conceptual development From the Middle Ages i ...

and was archived by the

British Universities Film and Video Council British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. * British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...

as part of their Television and Radio Index for Learning and Teaching (TRILT). In 2012, the film was acquired by the British Library's Moving Image Collection.

Plot

Returning from a night out, Martha (

) hears footsteps behind her and becomes convinced she's being followed as she walks down a dark path on her way home. She ponders various strategies such as pretending to do up her shoes in order to let her follower overtake her or simply running away, but dismisses each idea as endangering her even more. Eventually she screws up her courage to turn around and confront the man behind her, but when she does so she sees nothing except a mobile phone glowing on the ground as it calls somebody. James (

), her follower, has actually been going out of his way to avoid the impression he is following her or is a threat, but every time he does so it somehow backfires. He tries speeding up to overtake her, but this only makes Martha walk faster. He ponders taking a different route, but there are no turnings off the path they are walking down. Eventually he decides to make a "loud non-threatening phone call" to his mum, reasoning that: "I bet rapists never call their mums." However, as he is distracted with finding her number in his phone, he fails to notice a manhole in the ground and falls head over heels into it, his phone flying to the ground near Martha's feet.

Release

''Nightwalking'' was originally released online as part of the inaugural

Virgin Media Virgin Media Limited is a British telecommunications company which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom. Its headquarters are at Green Park in Reading, England. It is owned by Virgin Media O2, a 50:50 ...

Shorts Competition in 2008. It quickly became the most viewed film attracting over 12,300 views and hundreds of comments. The judges initially shortlisted the film for the Grand Prize. However, when the film came to be classified by the

British Board of Film Classification The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is a non-governmental organization, non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of films exhibited ...

it was given a 12a certificate, thus disqualifying it from the competition, which required that the 12 shortlisted films were certified as a PG or U.

Festivals

Broadcast

In 2010, ''Nightwalking'' was broadcast on

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

as part of "a series of short original films produced by a variety of talented writers and directors"; the first time in over 8 years that Channel 4 had acquired and broadcast independent short films.

Reception

Accolades

''Nightwalking'' has a rating of 6.8 out of 10 from

IMDb IMDb, historically known as the Internet Movie Database, is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and biograp ...

's top 1,000 voters.

References

External links

Actaeon Films
Official Production Company website

Official Distributor website
''Nightwalking''
at the BBC Film Network
''Nightwalking''
at the

British Council The British Council is a British organisation specialising in international cultural and educational opportunities. It works in over 100 countries: promoting a wider knowledge of the United Kingdom and the English language (and the Welsh lang ...

British Films Directory
''Nightwalking''
at the

British Film Institute The British Film Institute (BFI) is a film and television charitable organisation which promotes and preserves filmmaking and television in the United Kingdom. The BFI uses funds provided by the National Lottery to encourage film production, ...

''Nightwalking''
at the

Complete Index to World Film The Complete Index to World Film (citwf or citwf.com) is an online database of information related to movies. Citwf, compiled online by Alan Goble and Valan Publishing since 2004, had a Guinness Record as the world's largest published film-rela ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Nightwalking 2008 films 2008 short films British independent films British comedy-drama short films 2000s English-language films 2000s British films English-language short films