"The Parlor" is a 10-minute short film from almost 15 years ago written and directed by Geoffrey Haley, who is actually a successful cameraman who worked on many big Hollywood films. In this short film here, he gives us his take of what it would be like to actually be in a room with the people you meet in a chat room. A man in his 40s says he is 15 to impress a 14-year-old girl. A boy who is actually the same age of the girl says he is 20 to impress her as well. Nobody cares about the obese honest woman. A man confesses his homosexuality to another man, who, on the other hand, thinks he is talking to a girl. This is a totally hilarious little movie, which also has some nice dramatic moments. However, I wish Haley would have taken a completely different path with the ending. It was nicely done how he switched the action from physical room reality to real room reality, but the final scene was a big no-go. Too unrealistic for my taste. I wish he'd have shown us how the chat room people actually exist in real life, how they leave the room, maybe go to dinner with their wives/husbands instead of hurting this movie with a truly ridiculous and unfunny ending. Still, overall a pretty good watch. Thumbs up and I hope Haley is going to write and direct some more in the future.

I think that this short is so enjoyable, that I had to show all of my friends and family, so that they could understand the awareness and problems it was giving us. It portrays the dangers of chat rooms (so hilariously.) It uses a waiting room to visualise the chat room; you've got all the characters in there, so you can see them for who they really are, and for who they are trying to disguise themselves as, for example blatant use of lying about age and gender (e.g. you've got a huge 40 year old bloke posing as a 13 year old girl named Beth) - not only did it show the dangers of talking about sexual things on chat room, it also shows the dangers of trust; could you really trust meeting someone from a chat room, when there is such common use of disguising ones self in the chat rooms? I think that once seeing this, you are more alert and suspicious about trusting people online; and this film may be a good way to make parents' children aware of the modern day danger of the Internet and its many chat rooms. The only thing I think that would have made this more interesting, is if they had put more focus on all of the characters. Granted that the main focus on 'slappysue' and 'skater' was needed for the twist; but I also feel that exploring the results of the conversations between the other characters would have put more insight into the point that this short was trying to make.

Only a few words come to mind after watching this film, and those are, in slang, OMG... It is simply fantastic. The cast was very well chosen, the direction was right on target, and the overall "pazzazz" of the film was high and mighty.9.7/10 --- Superior

I found this on a friend's profile on Instant Messenger, and at first had no idea what it was. Up until the last two minutes or so, I was very confused, but I'm glad I kept watching until the end ... upon finishing the clip, I came to IMDb to see exactly what it was: a short film, an excerpt from something, etc. I would love to see this more of this man's work; I'd REALLY like to see this piece go to Cannes or Sundance if it hasn't already -- I can see it winning an award. Definitely check it out.