Better Than You is a 2020 Short Film (5 minutes) written and directed by Matthew D. Gilpin, starring Deri Evans and Eleanor Scholz.
The film features an ordinary man (Evans) saying goodbye to his girlfriend (Scholz) as she leaves the house... but for some reason, she thanks him for things he's pretty sure he hasn't done, leaving him baffled. And after she leaves, the man realizes to his horror that he's not alone: an intruder has broken into the house - an intruder that looks just like him...
Better Than You contains examples of:
- Always Someone Better: According to the writer and director, the film was based around the specific fear of being replaced by someone better; as such, the shapeshifter embodies this fear by not only being calmer, faster, cleverer, and more impressive than the protagonist, but it even proves to be a better boyfriend than him.
- The Bad Guy Wins: Nothing that the protagonist does can stop the shapeshifter, and the film ends with the shapeshifter killing him by presumably eating him alive, then taking his place.
- Chekhov's Gun: The keys that the protagonist leaves in the front hall after locking the front door. The protagonist goes for them after he tries to flee the house, only to find that the shapeshifter's already beaten him to them, and with no other means of unlocking the front door, the protagonist is trapped at the end of the hallway as the shapeshifter closes in.
- Downer Ending: The film ends with the shapeshifter killing the protagonist, presumably taking his place afterwards.
- Eat the Camera: The final shot of the film is the shapeshifter's jaw distending open as it rushes towards the camera, suggesting that it actually ate the protagonist.
- False Reassurance: The shapeshifter mockingly tells the protagonist not to worry - since it's such a good actor that nobody will ever know he's dead.
- Fanservice: When taking the form of the protagonist's girlfriend, the shapeshifter is wearing a transparent white shirt - allowing viewers a look at Eleanor Scholz in her bra. For good measure, it's likely the shapeshifter's way of teasing the protagonist.
- Faux Affably Evil: The shapeshifter is quite friendly with the protagonist, even while it's gearing up to kill him and replace him.You look scared. Don't worry; no-one will ever notice that you're gone. I'm very convincing. And in the end, if no-one notices you've been replaced... what difference will it make?
- Five-Second Foreshadowing:
- Right at the start of the film, the girlfriend gets very sweet on the main character for something he did for her at work that day... except he has no idea what she's talking about - the first hint that a shapeshifter is slowly taking over his life.
- Also, the girlfriend chides the man for leaving his front door open overnight. Shortly afterwards, he realizes that there's someone else in the house - with the implication that the shapeshifter snuck in through the open front door earlier.
- Hope Spot:
- After realizing that he's got a doppelganger stalking him, the protagonist wisely calls the police for help... only to be lured away from the phone just long enough for the shapeshifter to sneak around him, call the police back, and tell them it was all a misunderstanding. Worse still, the shapeshifter is between him and the phone, so calling again is impossible.
- Finally, the protagonist just decides to flee the house, making a run for the front door. Only the shapeshifter has already stolen the key from where he left it, and because the door was already locked, the protagonist is trapped in the hallway.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: The protagonist and the shapeshifter impersonating him can be distinguished by the fact that the former wears a t-shirt and jeans, while the latter wears a button-up white shirt and trousers.
- Kill and Replace: The shapeshifter's goal is to kill the protagonist and take over his life. It succeeds at the end of the film.
- Minimalist Cast: There are only three characters in this story (four if you count the emergency services operator), and one of them is a shapeshifter that has no default form, being portrayed either by Deri Evans or Eleanor Scholz.
- No Name Given: None of the characters are named aloud or in the credits.
- Offscreen Teleportation: The shapeshifter has a habit of seemingly vanishing whenever the protagonist takes his eyes off it, though it's later revealed that it's actually transforming into something less visible.
- Private Polymorph Reveal: Very early in the film, the protagonist's girlfriend thanks him for doing something nice for her at work that day, but the protagonist is left confused by this because he clearly doesn't remember doing this. Given the horror genre, audiences are immediately alert to something deeply amiss, but the protagonist doesn't think anything of it - until the girlfriend leaves, and he finds an exact duplicate of himself washing the dishes in the kitchen.
- Rubber Man: Downplayed with the shapeshifter; it seems to have the ability to contort its forms to some degree, for while it's in the form of the protagonist, it's face distorts and its mouth gapes open right before it kills him.
- Rubber Orifice: The shapeshifter's jaws open freakishly wide sideways and downwards right before it kills the boyfriend.
- Scenery Dissonance: The story is set on a bright sunny day, but the atmosphere is one of overwhelming creepiness as the shapeshifter slowly corners the protagonist; for good measure, instead of appearing in the shadows, the shapeshifter only chooses to show itself in the brightest parts of the house, either near the windows or under the overhead lights.
- Shapeshifting Sound: Whenever the shapeshifter transforms, it produces a subtle liquid slurping noise.
- Shapeshifting Trickster: Already subtly taking the protagonist's place at work, the shapeshifter goes to the trouble of washing his dishes just to alert him to its presence, lead him on a merry dance around the house, call the police just to trick them into leaving him helpless, and steal the protagonist's keys to trap him by the front door. It doesn't have to do any of this by all appearances - it's just toying with him.
- Soft-Spoken Sadist: The shapeshifter never raises its voice, instead speaking in a low, calming tone that's barely a step removed from whispering, even as it slowly counters every attempt by the protagonist to save himself.
- Too Dumb to Live: Downplayed. First off the protagonist shouldn't have left the door unlocked overnight. However it's likely he simply forgot or assumed he'd already locked it before going to bed the night before. Second, he did the smart thing by calling the police immediately, but he never should have put the phone down since it allowed the Changeling to highjack his phone call.
- To Serve Man: Implied. From the way the changeling's jaw starts to widen as it lunges to kill the protagonist.
- Terrified Transformation Witness: The protagonist is left staring in disbelief and horror as he witnesses the shapeshifter masquerading as his girlfriend, then transforming back into him.
- Transformation Discretion Shot: The shapeshifter almost never transforms on camera, with the protagonist's attention being drawn away by him bumping into a chair or following an object thrown across the room, and when he looks again, the shapeshifter has transformed - sometimes to the point of seemingly vanishing. The only point where a transformation is witnessed is in the final shot of the film, when its face warps out of shape as it kills and eats the protagonist.
- Trapped-with-Monster Plot: The gist of the story is that the protagonist has accidentally cornered himself in his house with the shapeshifter and needs to either call for help or make a break for the door before it can kill him. Unfortunately, because he locked the front door with a key, the shapeshifter has stolen it and left him inescapably trapped.
- Voice Changeling: The shapeshifter can also switch voices while keeping the same appearance, which it demonstrates by assuming the girlfriend's form but using the boyfriend's voice to talk to the police on the phone.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: As expected, the shapeshifter has this ability. It's not known how powerful it is, for along with assuming the form of the protagonist and the girlfriend, it may also have the ability to assume other forms like animals or objects, since it appears to vanish whenever it's not being directly observed - and the sound effect indicates that it transformed to do so... and in the finale, it distorts its face and jaws to murder the protagonist.
- Wham Sound: Shortly after his girlfriend leaves, the protagonist is startled by the sound of someone washing the dishes - when he's alone in the house.
