“Everything seems to have stacked up in your favor,” an officer tells an excited pilot in Iain Softley’s heartwarming short film, The Shepherd. Looking across the North Sea, all you can see is water and sky. The dark blue horizon almost melts with the stars, and the Christmas Eve setting makes for a hauntingly beautiful and lonely image. As we near the middle of the holiday season, Softley’s film inspires us to keep the faith in order to get home.
Ben Radcliffe’s Freddie has resigned to the fact that he won’t be home for Christmas to see his family or his girl. When a snowball fight knocks a fellow vampire fighter pilot out of commission to fly back home across the North Sea, Freddie takes it as a sign that he should take his place. As he prepares his surprise, the base readies to shut down. “You’ll have the skies to yourself,” another officer tells him.
“Carol of the Bells” serenely plays as Freddie’s journey begin, but as the angels finish their singing, we hear dangerous clicking and whirring. After the compass and communication go down, Freddie lowers the aircraft to conserve fuel, but the lack of another voice is a terrifying thought. Softley shoves us into that cockpit and forces us to confront our own instincts and realizations. Would you be able to calm yourself in the face of grave adversity to save yourself?
Softley builds a remarkable amount of tension in quite a short amount of time, but The Shepherds transforms into something unexpected in its second half. To reveal more would ruin the magical elements the story introduces. Radcliffe lets that fear and worry play out on his handsome face, but he takes every new discovery with grounded surprise and charm.
The Shepherd is like a shot to the heart. It’s wondrous but avoids becoming sickly. Do you have the capacity to truly believe in the goodness of others?
The Shepherd debuts on Disney+ on December 1.
![2025 Oscars: Can a Late-Breaker Still Win Best Picture? [POLL]](https://www.awardsdaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/gladiator-350x250.jpg)
