There is no title sequence or fade from black at the beginning of director Lily Platt’s short film Crisis Actor (2026). Instead, she thrusts her audience into the dysfunction of the main character’s life. It’s a blunt but effective opening because it sets the tone for a story about an emotionally spiraling character who makes one impulsive decision after another.
Celine (Sarah Steele) is a struggling actress addicted to hysteria and eager to be the center of attention. In the film’s opening scene, we observe how she is content to lie and manipulate, first by defrauding customer service reps and then holding her ex-boyfriend’s belongings hostage. We then witness Celine’s ongoing spiral over a single day, until the fallout from a lie she orchestrates at an Al-Anon meeting humbles her with a personal road-to-Damascus moment.
Crisis Actor is an accelerated snapshot of what is realistically a longer and more complicated journey towards reawakening and reasserting control over one’s negative emotions. It moves briskly, and while orderly, it has a bluntness in its assured brevity that relates to Celine’s impulsive behavior.
The film’s beginning and end are a reminder that no story is complete, except as a self-contained segment of a larger narrative. Instead, Crisis Actor is a series of chapters condensed into one short film that begins with despair and ends with hope.
We’ll never know how Celine wound up in her dysfunctional spiral, nor will we know what happens next. We can, however, surmise that the break-up with her boyfriend was a factor, but there might be other extenuating circumstances. These will likely expand the film’s themes to engage in the conversation about reckoning with unfulfilled aspirations.
The short form is all about a setup with a payoff, which Platt appears to effortlessly master. She’s resourceful, working within the form’s constraints without compromising her vision. For a debut film, Crisis Actor’s tightly-woven story impresses, especially the way the director manipulates time.
The opening scene jumps back and forth to show how the apartment has become increasingly cluttered. In the aftermath, we assume, of the breakup. Celine’s phone conversation with a customer service rep humorously emphasizes her lack of shame. Half asleep on the floor, she pulls a green négligée over her face, the same négligée she’s trying to defraud the rep over. This all lends Crisis Actor a playful energy and conceals the extremes of Celine’s dysfunction behind a cheekiness.
Meanwhile, the camera spies her headshot wedged under books, headphones, and other items on the coffee table. Celine’s beaming smile in the black-and-white photograph suggests a different person from the one we’re watching, lying around the apartment in her sleep clothes. This sluggish version of Celine finds it easy to tell lies and manipulate, which doesn’t seem to align with the Celine in the photograph.
At a glance, it appears simple and playful, but Platt is asking us to look and listen. Will we try to understand Celine and not hastily judge her?
Celine is a layered character, not only because Platt crafts every scene to reveal the different layers of her dysfunctional nature and addiction, depending on where she is and who she is with, but also thanks to Steele’s captivating performance. Steele understands that playing a character like Celine is about showing or telling the audience something as much as it is about drawing them into the character’s inner world. This is necessary because her dysfunction and addiction are an internal condition that affects how she functions outwardly.
When we think of addiction, we think of substance abuse. It’s much in the same way as when we think of trauma. There are certain things we associate with it, such as war and violent crimes. Grief is just as nuanced, for example, because we can grieve the life we missed out on. Crisis Actor considers addiction through a specific lens that defines it as a deceptively simple film.
The film thoughtfully considers human nature, specifically how certain emotions, even though they’re not healthy, can ironically feel more comfortable than the effort of trying to move on. Hence, there’ll be those who watch Crisis Actor who will not necessarily see themselves in Celine but will recognize familiar emotions. This is a testament to the film and its filmmakers’ emotional intelligence, who lace their entertaining black comedy with genuine thoughtfulness.
There’s a case to be made that Crisis Actor is a possession story, but not of the traditional type. Instead, if we are to keep an open mind and remember the affable-looking Celine from the black-and-white photograph, Platt offers a more realistic version of possession. Instead, it’s Celine’s self-destructive nature, her self-pity and self-loathing, what we might describe as her “inner devil” that wants to come out and play and scorch the earth.
True to its deceptively simple nature, Crisis Actor is a bold and captivating reflection on the best and worst sides of humankind. To Platt’s credit, she doesn’t make this a story about redemption because she understands that would simplify and force an ending on Celine’s journey, even cheapen it.
Crisis Actor premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival and was the recipient of the Short Film Jury Award: U.S. Fiction.