Somewhere between the blank page and the final period, a writer's worst nightmare is getting a countdown clock. Jack Hourahine's new short film A Clockwriter takes that anxiety and makes it literal: a screenwriter's own character comes to life, and every single letter he types moves the hands of a clock one minute closer to an encircling deadline. Six minutes of runtime. One ticking clock. Zero room to breathe.
Release Date & Where to Watch
A Clockwriter lands today, September 24, 2026. That's right - you don't have to wait for this one. It's a Hollywood production with English as its original language, and at just six minutes long, it's the kind of thing you can squeeze between your third cup of coffee and your fourth existential crisis of the morning.
As for where to watch, short films like this tend to surface on festival circuits and streaming platforms that champion indie genre work. Given the TMDb rating currently sits at 0/10 - which, for the uninitiated, usually means nobody's logged a score yet rather than a critical disaster - there's a good chance this one is still flying under the radar. Keep an eye on the usual haunts for short-form horror and speculative fiction. If you blink, you might miss it. Which, fittingly, is the entire point of the movie.
Cast & Crew
For a six-minute film, A Clockwriter packs a two-hander that sounds anything but ordinary. Kitu Turcas stars as The Screenwriter - the poor soul chained to his typewriter while the clock eats his remaining minutes. Turcas has the unenviable job of carrying most of the film's tension on his face, because when your antagonist is a ticking deadline, you can't exactly punch it.
Then there's Peter Aziz as The Horse Plague. Yes, you read that correctly. The Horse Plague. Whatever that character is - manifestation, metaphor, or something far stranger - it's the kind of credit that makes you sit up straight. Aziz reportedly leans into the role's mystery, and honestly, with a name like that, how could he not? It's the sort of casting choice that tells you this short is not interested in playing it safe.
Behind the camera, Jack Hourahine directs. His vision here is tight and high-concept: one room, one writer, one clock, and a premise that turns the act of writing itself into a survival thriller. Six minutes is a bold choice for a story about dwindling time. Every second of runtime is a second the audience feels.
Story & What to Expect
Here's the setup: a screenwriter sits down to work, and his character - the thing he invented - somehow manifests time itself. Each typewritten letter advances the clock by one minute. The deadline isn't abstract. It's a physical force, and it's encircling him.
Think of the sweatiest, most claustrophobic writing scenes in cinema - the frantic typing, the crumpled pages, the mounting dread - and then imagine the stakes were literally life and death, measured in keystrokes. That's A Clockwriter. The film leans into the anxiety every creative person knows: the feeling that time is not on your side, that the work is consuming you even as you make it.
With only six minutes to work with, expect Hourahine to skip the setup and drop you straight into the pressure cooker. No wasted scenes. No filler. The premise does the heavy lifting, and the clock does the rest. The Horse Plague element suggests there's a surreal, possibly grotesque layer on top of the ticking-time gimmick - an unnerving presence that raises the question of who, exactly, is in control of this story.
What should you expect tonally? Likely dread, dark humor, and a meta twist or two. A film about a writer being stalked by his own creation is, by nature, self-aware. The question is whether the ending lands as a punchline, a tragedy, or both.
Why It's Worth Watching
Short films are the wild west of cinema. No studio notes, no bloated runtime, no obligation to explain themselves. A Clockwriter embodies that spirit: a single, razor-sharp idea executed at exactly the length it needs. Six minutes. Not a second more.
It's also a rare treat for anyone who's ever stared at a cursor and felt their lifespan drain away. Writers will watch this and feel personally attacked. Everyone else will watch it and feel their pulse quicken. That's a universal hook.
And there's the curiosity factor. A character called The Horse Plague? A clock that moves with every letter? Hourahine is clearly swinging for something weird and memorable, and weird and memorable is exactly what short-form genre filmmaking does best. At six minutes, you've got no excuse not to press play. The clock, after all, is already ticking.
