Leash (2010 short film)

Leash is a 2010 Malichkan body horror short film directed by Marko Dugandžić and his production company JollyRoGeReaL Entertainment. This was the last film Dugandžić directed before being elected into office. The film starred American-Malichkan pro football player Zlatan Joksimović, Malichkan singer Emilija Janša, and Malichkan newsreader Zeljko Šarec. The film premiered before "Blit6ar: That's the Last Straw!" of the same year.

American amateur filmmaker James Cadden made a remake of this film in 2011 and has been released onto YouTube the same year. Here is the short in question on YouTube.

Plot
The short begins with an advertisement for a fictional device called "Nanosite". A man named Jake (Zlatan Joksimović) fails to notice the ad as he puts on his football uniform for a game day playing for his professional team, the fictional Svetijurij Knights. His girlfriend Corinne (Emilija Janša) laughs it off and orders him to go to the table for lunch. Later that night he notices that his emails are full of spam, 160 of them to be exact, all of them a free trial order form of the Nanosite device.

He decides to order the device and it arrives the next day. A few minutes earlier he is seen giving his girlfriend an errand to do and is later greeted by his father Barry (Miro Židan) who claims that his laptop was acting up, and so was Jake's cellphone. After receiving his free sample, he tries it on, and after a few seconds becomes used to it. He receives a call from manager Daniel (Zeljko Šarec) who tells Jake to prepare for the upcoming football finals. Jake replies by accepting but saying he bought a new device around his neck. The call ends just as we see the first signs of Jake's mutations caused by the Nanosite device.

The mutations get even more grotesque as he receives three phone calls: one from Corinne, one from Barry, and one from Daniel. After a few days, the mutations are beginning to cause the device to fuse with his spine. Daniel arrives astonished and shocked, Jake remarking that the device is a new "toy" he's been trying out. As he tries to call 999, a catatonic Jake stops him and slices his neck open with a knife.

The next day, Corinne arrives as the device integration is on the verge of completion, at which point the mutations have now made Jake unrecognizable, looking more like a surreal mutant humanoid creature, with wires emerging from the Nanosite device, which has completely fused to his body and sinking into his neck. A horrified Corinne struggles to escape Jake, now under the device's influence, as he slowly transforms into his final form, but instead has a more grotesque-looking prototype of the Nanosite device inserted into her by the mutant Jake, causing her to change into an unseen mutated version of herself.

Production
This was Dugandžić's last film before being sworn in as Prime Minister the following year. He admitted this in 2013, although he started production on an animated film in 2015. The movie was titled Ryu Aoba: The Movie, and was released in 2019.

The film opted to use more practical effects especially for the stages of Jake's gradual mutation into the finished creature, which Dugandžić dubbed as "NanoJake". 5 costume designers helped turn Zlatan, who played Jake, into "NanoJake", which Dugandžić described as "a horrific cross between Brian and a cyborg mutant". The mutation causes wires to emerge from the Nanosite device. The wires sink into his neck and the areas where the wires have sunken into begin to swell. Finally, what looks like grafts of skin begin to obscure his hair and his eyes, making him look bald and eyeless.

A video, "Putting on my Nanojake costume" was uploaded by Zlatan onto VidSpace on May 11th, 2010, just a day after the film was released. It featured Zlatan putting on the prosthetics and makeup made to look like Jake's final mutation. The video was also uploaded to YouTube.