We all used to do the same things until COVID happened, and many of us have returned to our old ways. Some, with exceptions, are still on pandemic mode, not leaving home unless we have to. Apologies for connecting COVID to any film, which is the laziest, SEO-baiting practice second to attaching any film to the other big thing happening right now. However, that is the kind of vibe I’m getting from a Mexican short film, Extinction of the Species. During one of the scenes here, the short’s protagonist Esther (Karen Furlong) watches people. Maybe you, dear reader, do that more frequently than I do, because it’s harder to do that now. Anyway, as a resident of Mexico City, she people watches in bars and in open gyms, drawing and looking for fellow strays.

When it comes to short film about the gaze, the participant of the gaze needs to be interesting, and that’s very true here where. Clocking in at 24 minutes, Furlong evinces enough emotions for a short that’s technically about nothing. She gives us silent rage, but also curiosity and desire. And the subjects of the gaze in Extinction of the Species are equally compelling. I can, as a regular man who likes men, enjoy the shirtless men working out in an open gym. Being me, I can also read into those images, reminding me that Toronto needs an open gym even if it’s not practical to have one here. Or it’s a statement about beauty’s ephemeral nature, especially in an ending world. But of course, the short returns to Esther as she goes after one of the ladies working out at the gym, who doesn’t fit in like she does.

The denouement eventually comes in Extinction of the Species, as Esther enters the house of a woman named Vampire, and I’m not 100% with this as the short’s logical conclusion. The short has some horror undertones, mostly through its lighting, and it doesn’t explore those themes. It gives us red neon lighting no Esther, or candlelit living room with her and Vampire. Vampire, then, asks Esther if she can see the former’s dog. This feels like its stretches ordinary death and ghostly presences with all out extinction. Then again, this is a dramatic short with an experimental side. And I should have expected it to end with two people talking about theory. What I wrote doesn’t feel much. But this is the first short in a while that feels like there’s some meat to it.

Watch Extinction of the Species on MUBI.