[5] He co-produced the short film with his future wife and collaborator Emma Thomas,[6] while Jeremy Theobald, his friend from university who would also star in Following, was cast as the paranoid man.

[9] Nolan explored the idea of multiple dimensions in its plot: in an interview with The Daily Beast, he opined that "films are uniquely suited towards addressing paradox, recursiveness, and worlds-within-worlds," and further cited the works M. C. Escher and Jorge Borges as influences in this domain.

Christopher Hooton of The Independent deemed it "a fairly unremarkable student film," but considered this to be a "great" thing since "it shows that Nolan was not a master from the second he first got his hands on a 16mm camera but, crucially, kept at it, kept learning and incrementally amassed an impressive set of cinematic skills that put him in command of huge budgets that allow him to fully achieve his vision".

[3] Sammy Nickalls, writing for Esquire, expressed the same sentiment, further adding that while "it's certainly no Interstellar, it's filled with Nolan's flair, from his gravitation toward black and white to his abstract imagery.

[7] Film School Rejects' H. Perry Horton claimed that Nolan "has been one of the most intriguing and intelligent filmmakers working since the first frame of Doodlebug.