I’m Not Doing “All Too Well,” Review of Taylor Swift’s Short Film

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Chloe Amonson, Reporter

It’s official, Taylor Swift released “Red, Taylors Version,” Thursday night. As a proud Swiftie, I’m always excited to hear that Taylor is coming out with new music, so I was elated to find out that a short film would be accompanying the release of the remake of “Red.”

 

“All Too Well” was beautifully filmed and produced, with some sneaky appearances of the color red in almost every scene. One of these appearances included the famous scarf, introduced in the matching song from the original “Red.” The fight scenes between a young Taylor Swift and Jake Gyllenhaal, played by Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien were almost more heart-wrenching than the ten-minute version of “All Too Well” featured in the video.

 

Sadie Sink did an amazing job at portraying the feeling Taylor sings about in the song, showing every little expression on her face to show exactly what is described. Dylan O’Brien did exactly what he needed to do as well to make us hate him! He played the perfect example of the terrible boyfriend Taylor first sang to us about in 2012.

 

The color symbolism in every scene made this film what it is, with the progression of light to dark and back to light to dramatize the emotion heard in the lyrics and shown by Sadie Sink. A few ways this was shown was through the original bright yellow house at the beginning of the relationship to show excitement and joy, and then quickly turns into a dark blue house to exaggerate the downfall of their relationship. And the final scene with Jake looking at an older Taylor wearing the red scarf really just did it for me, showing that she was now her own person again, but she still had her mark on him.

 

“All Too Well” exceeded my expectations, with amazing acting and filmography. Thank you so much, Taylor, for making me sob on a Friday night.