The Stall (2013)

The Stall was the big turning point for me. I felt like I was ready to tackle something a little more serious finally which was something I had wanted to do for a long time but was afraid to try. I had the idea and the tagline Where will YOU be when the end comes?� since high school and I always knew I wanted to do a short about someone trapped in a bathroom stall. I'm a huge Lovecraft fan and I thought this was the perfect chance to play with some blasphemous terrors from outside time and space. The whole short is filled with little references to Lovecraft stories, from the name of the pizza shop to the radio station DJ and the graffiti on the stall itself. We actually shot in the pizza shop I work at, though the bathroom itself was actually at an abandoned factory cum art studio. I wanted to use my real day to day life at the pizza shop to vent off some frustration and also my secret fear of dying at work, having essentially spent my life at a job that is the complete opposite of my ambitions. The stall itself that the main character is afraid to leave because of some unseen horror lurking outside became a metaphor for my the shop being my own comfort zone that I'm afraid to leave for fear of the unknown. The devil you know is better than the devil you don't as they say.

—Mike Lombardo