Character Leftovers

My wife and I attended the Eighth Annual Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Film Festival (2013) here in Seattle. I’m doing reviews of some of the shorts we saw there.
What do you think about how people turned on M. Night Shyamalan? Everybody loved him when he did The Sixth Sense, but by the time he did Signs, everybody was so over him. For the record, I liked Signs and The Village and I like The Lady in the Water once.
Shyamalan’s best directed movie was Unbreakable, with Bruce Willis as a superhero who could not be hurt, except by water. People might complain about the other movies, but they don’t bother with Unbreakable. The thing that I didn’t like about it was that everything about Bruce Willis’ character contributed to the plot.
There is a famous quote (Chekhov, I think) that, if you show an audience a gun in the first act, it must go off in the third. I guess that’s right - but you can take that sentiment way too far.
Willis’ character in this movie is so tightly connected to the plot, every aspect of him fitted so perfectly to the clockwork mechanism of the script, that there is nothing left over. Take away the plot, and the character is gone.
And that is at odds the idea that drama is about real people - that it could be a day in the life of someone, someone like you or me.
Which brings me to this posting’s review:

88:88
Joey Ciccoline
URL
Woman makes changes to her apartment, securing her bed to the floor and securing the door against intrusion. That night, aliens attempt to abduct her, as the seem to have done in the past, but a trap that she set for them wounds one. While the aliens attack, appliances malfunction, making her digital alarm clock read 88:88.
Establishes world: Yes.
Character leftovers: Yes.
Tells a story: Yes.
And what I thought
The woman comes home with supplies – hardware, tools, restraints – and we can only guess what she means to do with them. She installs extra locks and bars the door. She secures straps to the bed. Does she mean to hold someone prisoner in the room, in the bed? Then she chains herself to the bed. Is she a werewolf, ready to change? What's that mirror for?
When the alien comes, everything falls into place. It was nicely done.
Which brings me to the character leftover. We learn from a phone message that she’s had a fight with someone, boyfriend, perhaps. She makes all her preparations alone. The aliens turn out to be one of her problems. While she has to deal with the abductions, she has to deal with the disbelief of her boyfriend. You can believe that this character had a life before this film and will after.
That’s why leftovers are a good thing.