A ReelRun short film / proof of concept for .EXE
A desperate grocery store worker with an experimental neural implant is replaced by a sinister digital doppelgänger that traps him inside a void between reality and whatever lurks within his own head.
01 the idea
the horror was never the technology. it lives where it always has, in what we are willing to stop questioning, and in the patient entities on the other side that have been waiting for us to turn a blind eye.
02 director's statement
the chip is only a door.
Tensor is about what we’re giving away without noticing. We’ve spent years living inside the machine, watching people hand their attention and their sense of what’s real over to an algorithm, and stop asking what it wants. Technology is moving exponentially, and neural chips aren’t science fiction anymore. AI isn’t the scary part, it’s just software. It’s humans as hardware we should fear, and the companies selling access to the inside of our heads. The chip is only a door, and the horror is what walks in once we leave it open.
Most possession films are supernatural, and we watch them from the outside. We’ve never seen possession through technology. I want to link the two and put the audience inside a possession that’s real and possible in our world, which is far scarier. They never leave Martin and are never sure what’s real any more than he is.
The texture is a grocery store late at night, a place everyone knows that always feels a little off. Blue fluorescent light humming over empty aisles, hold music that never ends, static creeping into the speakers. Red is Martin’s world and purple is the entity’s, and the shift between them is quiet, a label that isn’t right, a box in the wrong color, an aisle that leads nowhere. It’s all practical and tactile so it feels real, until it doesn’t.
I want people to leave with that hum in the back of their head, wondering what they’ve already let in.
jack ruefli
03 characters
Tall and slim and running on empty, working the night shift stacking cans to keep a life together that's coming apart. On the surface he's dry and easygoing, the type to crack a joke at his manager or mutter at the hold music to keep from losing it, but the thing you have to understand is that he isn't reckless, he's desperate.
His sister has leukemia, the job that was supposed to cover it didn't come close, so he sold the only thing he had left, access to the inside of his own head.
An ancient presence from a lower dimension that has now found a doorway. It was never the technology, the chip in Martin's head is just the door, and this is what was waiting on the other side of it.
It doesn't kick the door down, it doesn't have to. It waits for him to be tired and alone, and what it wants isn't to destroy him, it's to replace him, to wear his face and stack his cans and live his life.
Entity references from the director's book
The store manager and a lifelong World of Warcraft guy, the kind of boss who's more of a coworker than an authority figure. Easygoing and a little checked out, the type to call the company that owes Martin money a bunch of assholes and genuinely mean it, but not the type to actually do anything about it.
04 the world · 2036
Tensor is set about ten years out, after the AI boom. The breakthroughs were real, the wealth was not shared. Medicine can cure almost any illness and almost no one can afford the cure. The grid brownouts most nights. Food has narrowed to a handful of brands selling rehydrated protein out of cans.
It's the world we already have, only older, dimmer, more expensive, and quietly hollowed out from the inside. And one company sits behind the cans on the shelf and the chip in Martin's neck.
get paid. get healed. get ahead.
Join a paid neural research program today. Treatment credit available for qualifying families.
Participant codes are assigned at enrollment. Suppressant regimen required. Payments subject to review. Please continue to hold.
in-world commercial · Amaranth Group
Amaranth Group's commercial for the Bell Program, the paid trial behind the chip in Martin's neck. Free healthcare, a monthly payment, a new mind. The side effects are just part of the integration phase.
Made by hand in Blender. No generative AI.
05 visual style
the auditory mood. scan the code, headphones on, lights off.
Listen on your phone ↗Playlist link coming soon.
Tensor lives in the fluorescent hum of a grocery store after close. Cold practical light, deep shadow, and a world that slowly stops being the one Martin knows.
in the vein of Videodrome / Pulse (Kairo) / We're All Going to the World's Fair
there are two realities and the space in between.
Red will define Martin's real reality, and purple will define the entity's.
the shift between them lives in the production design.
Small things first. A label peeling back to show a different one underneath, a box that's the wrong color, a tennis ball that comes back a different shade than the one he threw.
the product
Martin spends the night stacking them. Drag across the box. It isn't only the color that changes.
half human, half something else.
To keep the entity unknown, we lean on the uncanny valley. Our lead actor plays both Martin and the thing wearing him, his likeness pushed with SFX makeup, the soulless black eyes finished in post. Grounded, practical, and just wrong enough.
production design by hayeon kim
wider and open shapes & structure
Farmer Ben's as Martin knows it. Worn, ordinary, under-lit, the aisles still give him room to breathe.
dense and claustrophobic shapes & structure
The same aisles closing in. Signage that has quietly changed, product that's one shade off, and every can tracing back to Amaranth Group, one tech company's monopoly on the food supply.
06 the void
Real test footage, shot and comped by our team. The handheld move is tracked frame by frame to a fraction of a pixel, then the purple aisle and the void are built around it in post.
07 the location
A real grocery outlet in Los Angeles, locked in and ready to go. Drag across the aisle to see it the way the night shift will, or tap any of the photos below to compare them up close. This is where the location money goes: overnight shoots inside it, after it closes.
08 the bigger picture
Tensor is built to travel the genre festival circuit and show what this world looks like on screen. It's the proof of concept for .EXE, a feature that tells the whole story of what's waiting on the other side.
09 the team
Jack is a filmmaker from Perth, Western Australia, now based in Los Angeles. He's an AFI Conservatory alumnus and runs ReelRun, and before that his Australian shorts and music videos played more than 50 international festivals. He also produced Lucha, which was selected for the Oscar®-qualifying HollyShorts Film Festival. Watch his films.
Hector is an award-winning producer, a graduate of the AFI Conservatory Producing Program, and a member of the Producers Guild of America (PGA). He works across independent narrative film, documentary, and branded content, with work screening at Oscar®-qualifying festivals including Cleveland International Film Festival, Miami Film Festival, and Cinequest. His documentary Brothers on Three received a theatrical release, his debut narrative feature Venice Days is slated for release this year, and his commercial clients include Converse, TAG Heuer, and Virgin Voyages.
Rohit is a Student Emmy-nominated, DGA award-winning director and writer from Mumbai, India, now based in Los Angeles, and joins Tensor as 1st Assistant Director. A 2024 graduate of the directing program at the American Film Institute and a Television Academy alumnus, he has worked in various industry roles on projects for Netflix, Amazon, Dharma Productions, and Maddock Films. His own films have screened at festivals including Giffoni Film Festival, AFI Fest, and Cinequest, and he brings a director's understanding of story and performance to running the set.
Arman is an LA-based, Iranian-American cinematographer with an MFA in Cinematography from the American Film Institute Conservatory. He primarily works in the narrative space and has experience with both film and digital formats. His work as a cinematographer is rooted in a story-first approach: he adapts his visual style to best serve the emotional and thematic needs of each project. His films have screened internationally at festivals including Beyond Fest, HollyShorts, and the Singapore International Film Festival.
Hayeon is a production designer who explores the intersection of story and space, crafting immersive environments through bold cinematic language. She began her feature film work in Korea in 2023, with projects screening at festivals in Boston, Seattle, Berlin, and Miami. Based in the U.S., she is an American Film Institute (MFA, 2025) graduate and a Canva Scholarship recipient.
Hamish is an editor and visual effects artist. He was born and raised in Perth, Australia, and completed his undergraduate degree at Curtin University. He then completed his master's degree at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, and since graduating has been working successfully in the industry as an editor and VFX artist. Several films Hamish has edited have premiered and taken home awards at Tribeca, HollyShorts, AFI Fest, LA Shorts, and the Student Emmy Awards. He also works as a commercial editor, collaborating with high-profile clients including Google, the US Winter Olympics Team, Vogue, Pinterest, and Lego.
crew
10 the ask
Tensor is partly funded. The script's on its sixth draft, the location is locked, the VFX pipeline is tested and the team is ready to go. What's missing is the money to cover our FilmLA permits and equipment, finish it properly in post, and send it out to festivals.
It's a small film with a big job, and every dollar goes into showing what this world looks like on screen.
Tax-deductible through our 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor.
The FilmLA permits we need to shoot on location in Los Angeles.
Camera, lighting and grip packages for the two-night shoot.
The void, the mimic, edit, color, sound and score.
Entry fees to get the finished film in front of festival programmers.
11 donate
Every dollar goes into getting Tensor shot and finished, from permits and equipment to the post work it takes to make the void look real. If you can't give right now, sharing the page helps just as much.
Tax-deductible Tensor is fiscally sponsored by a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so your donation is tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
We're putting the finishing touches on the donation page. Leave your email and we'll send you the link the moment it's live, plus the odd update from set.
