Horror Short Review: Never Left (2025)

Is there anything scarier than waking up in the middle of the night, you’re home alone, hearing only the sound of your own breathing, and then something moves upstairs? Is it just the creaks of an old house? The sound of groaning pipes? Or is something far more sinister?

That is the story that director Luca Zanlorenzi attempts to tell with Never Left, a horror short with more frights in a few minutes than many feature length films manage. It stars Samuele Toldo as Thomas, a man in everyone’s nightmare scenario. Something has gone bump in the night inside his house.

It’s a professionally made short, nailing a simple premise, and delivering strong infusions of jump-scare based horror with impressive sound design and a solid effect at the end. There’s nothing ground-breaking here, it’s just enjoyable horror and at less than six minutes long, it doesn’t hang about.