End of Play (2025) Review

Written and directed by Edem Wornoo

A deadline turns an ordinary office day into a fatal countdown for one junior creative at a cosmic agency (15mins).

End of Play sprinkles a little cosmic energy and the odd exploding head into a very familiar situation. Seven (Sope Dirisu of My Father’s Shadow and Gangs of London), is an employee who has been, for lack of a better word, coasting, but now he has until the dreaded end of play to create a world, or else.

There’s a lot of brilliant choices throughout the film, from The Client, represented as five people in grey suits moving and speaking as one, to the all-too-relatable way Seven spirals with the deadline hanging over his head. It could be a reach, but it feels like it speaks to how creativity is often sacrificed to the god of deadline, and the combination of art and bureaucracy is a hard line to walk.

Perhaps. Either way, underneath the workplace satire sits a sharper thesis, delivered almost as a mission statement to all the creatives who often get stuck in their own heads. It’s a dose of reality disguised in the fantastical; forget talent, just finish, and go from there.

A cheeky 80s sax score threads through it all, giving the short film a retro, faintly ironic swagger that keeps the darker stakes from ever tipping into genuinely bleak. The moral lands less like a sermon and more like a shrug: don’t stress yourself so much—even though, realistically, we probably all still will.

Curious about End of Play (2025)? You can learn more about the short film here.