tiskec I liked Blinky. At first the kid gets Blinky for a Christmas present. The thing must have costed a fortune. It's a fully functioning artificially intelligent robot. It's designed to keep kids company, and play with them. You almost develop a warm feeling with this robot. It does everything the child asks.The kid who was gifted it by his fighting parents, eventually goes nuts, and makes Blinky clean up after him. He blatantly abuses the robot throughout, as he notices his parents fighting more and more. Sooner or later, Karma kicks in, and Blinky gets even.This is a classic tale about revenge, and how you should treat others how you would like to be treated, even robots. I think this was an excellent short film. Who ever appreciates film as art will like this horror short. I did.I won't tell you what happens, but let's just say the brat is in better taste by the end of this short film.

Asten Culloski I couldn't help but crack up at the parts where Blinky was starting to go bad, I'd like to believe it's possible to depict a cute little robot going evil in a non-comical way, but maybe in this medium such a scenario just isn't possible and I should excuse the director. It was a very predictable short and nothing too clever, but the special effects were top-notch and the acting was above average. The idea behind BlinkyTM was unoriginal but the story seemed very fleshed out and set in reality compared to most other shorts of the horror genre, if you can even consider BlinkyTM "horror". That's the main problem I had with this short: the absolute lack of horror aspects in it. The film dragged on and that's saying a lot when talking about a 13 minute short; nothing really happened, 12 minutes were used to set the stage, and 1 minute was used for horror.The short itself--regardless of the lack of horror--was still well done, albeit riddled with clichés (fighting parents, neglected kid, takes it out on the robot, etc.) which make the film rather uninteresting. It's definitely not a short you'll remember for years to come, it's very forgettable but the quality of special effects and execution of the short overall--even though lacking in the horror field--earns itself a generous 7/10 from me.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) If you look past the horror/violence elements from this 12-minute short movie, there really is not that much left. A boy gets a robot as a gift, but after spending some time with it initially, he quickly loses interest and starts mistreating his new pal. The fact that he asked for a new one when old Blinky seems broken shows that the boy definitely had a touch of sadism to his character. He does not simply lose interest and stops caring, he wants to keep humiliating the robot. But revenge is a dish best served cold. In cold metal robot-style here in this short film. The writer and director is Ruairi Robinson from Ireland and he made this one 10 years after his Academy Award nomination. The lead actor is Max Records and he was already a bit of a star when this was made due to his turn in Spike Jonze's "Where the Wild Things Are". There's some drama in here, some horror, some humor even (the scene with the war robots with the actual danger being Blinky), but none of the aspects were really fascinating enough to let me recommend it. However, I did like the early parts with all their fake harmony and music, even if there was something really scary and eerie about the robot from the beginning. All in all, I hoped for more though. Not recommended.

Foreverisacastironmess One of the things I really liked about this short was how it, before rushing headlong and irrevocably into horror territory, does an effective enough job with the few more dramatic scenes of establishing why the kid is so lonely and messed up inside that he would treat the poor little robot helper like complete s**t until he eventually scrambles its circuits and causes it to turn homicidal! When I first watched it I thought that the constant mistreatment had somehow bred some kind of resentment in the robot against the boy, what especially make me think that theory was the definite 'tone' with which it says "Look at the mess you made." But I suppose the most credible and obvious reason it turns murderous would be simple "user error." It did get left out in the rain, was given multiple conflicting commands, the order by the kid to kill everyone and probably the mother's "If you make a mess like this again I'll have him clean and cook you for dinner", creating an order 'stack' so that when it rebooted, it was simply doing what it was told to as perceived orders from the family. The robot was the only real intelligent character in the story! The robot's design was eerie because it looked so innocent, like it had a permanent sweet smile on its face. It looked like a cross between Wall-E and R2-D2, and I honestly had no clue that it was a CGI creation, it looked like it was really there to me. It is such a wonderfully chilling moment when it grabs the meat carver from the kitchen drawer and says "Ready or not, here I come!" And that sure is one helluva nightmarishly grisly twist! The moment is all the more disturbing because it's slightly humorous by the cheery matter-of-fact way in which it informs the astonished parents! It's more effective in that it's what the robot was implied to have done, not what was shown. I think the ending would have worked better if they'd have just left it with the door closing instead of showing the unnecessary moment of gore which I found a little tacky. It just goes to show you, don't ever take out your troubles on someone that's only there to help and wants to be your friend, even when it's just a machine. Alex would have been just fine if he'd only respected Blinky, but the constant abuse made a monster out of it. Very good, it seamlessly blends elements of family sci-fi and horror into a wicked short which combines the creepy terror of the killer robot with the more old-fashioned macabre horror of cannibalism. That horrid little brat was a creep, he asked for it! Not too many problems that I personally can think of with this short, it delivers the goods. Later!