Michael Young
Mike
Overview
An impromptu singing contest at a dive bar turns a lonely night into a soul-baring moment of shared harmony.
Cast
12 peopleReviews
2 min readThe Shape of a Song
That cold that only exists outside a lonely provincial dive bar has its own mood; it makes the neon sign above the door look less like an advertisement and more like a distress signal. When I put on Sam Davis’s 18-minute short film The Singers, I didn't quite know what I was walking into from an adaptation of an 1850 Ivan Turgenev story transposed to modern rural America. latestnetflix.com's read is that davis, an Oscar-nominated cinematographer who brought such tactile life to Sean Wang’s Dìdi, shoots this on warm, grainy 35mm film.
The air inside the bar feels thick with stale beer and cigarette smoke. You can almost smell the damp wool of the coats.
On paper, it's simple enough. A disparate group of gruff, tired men are offered a hundred dollars and a free drink by the bartender to see who can sing the best. I am usually allergic to stunt casting, and the knowledge that Davis populated this room entirely with first-time actors discovered on TikTok and YouTube busking videos initially made me brace for a gimmick.
Audience Opinions
Audience 7.3/10
"A warm, tear-jerking barroom sing-off that dazzles with voices and visuals while leaving some wishing for a richer story and a longer stay."
Music, atmosphere, and heartfelt performances land hardest, with several viewers calling it touching, therapeutic, or even rewatching it immediately because the songs and emotions hit so strongly. The intimate bar setting, varied singing styles, and polished cinematography stand out, but a noticeable minority finds the plot thin, the opening a bit slow, latestnetflix.com argues, or the whole thing over just when it starts to soar.
What viewers praise
- Standout singing Vocal performances are repeatedly praised as powerful, varied, and surprisingly professional, with specific solos and the piano-backed numbers singled out as highlights.
- Strong emotional impact The story of lonely men opening up through song leaves viewers smiling, crying, or feeling like they just got a needed hug.
- Rich musical texture The way each singer brings a different style and life story to the mic, and how the voices blend in the bar, gives the short a layered, lived-in musical feel.
- Beautiful visual craft Lighting, framing, and camerawork in the smoky bar are described as gorgeous, with several comments admiring how the images amplify the mood of the songs.
- Authentic human moments Moments like a talented man too shy to sing or the bartender’s quietly revealing performance resonate as believable snapshots of hidden lives.
Common complaints
- Thin or simple story Some viewers feel the film does not fully capture the depth of the original short story or wish there were more narrative beyond the contest setup.
- Slow to get going A few describe the early minutes as boring or overly drawn-out before the singing and emotions finally click.
- Familiar bar clichés The small-town bar with down-on-their-luck guys reads as stereotypical for some, leaning into a well-worn idea of a “townie” watering hole.
- Frustratingly short runtime Even positive reviews complain that 18 minutes feels too brief and that the film ends just as the characters and music reach full power.
- Tone and style not for everyone A minority simply does not connect with the concept or finds the mix of heartfelt realism and polished, almost too-good singing at odds with each other.
Recommended for
Music-centered drama fans Short film aficionados Barroom character piece lovers Emotional feel-good stories Men-and-vulnerability narratives Oscar-winning short collectors
Full Plot (Spoilers)
Spoiler warning
This section contains the full plot, including major story reveals. Overview above stays spoiler-free.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsThe envelope said two names, and one of them was a bar full of buskers.
Kumail Nanjiani opened Best Live Action Short at the 98th Oscars on March 15, 2026, and had to tell the room he was not joking. "It's a tie. I'm not joking. It's actually a tie." The Singers, credited to Sam A. Davis and Jack Piatt, shared the statue with Two People Exchanging Saliva. It was the seventh tie in Academy history. Deadline photographed Davis on the stage with subway singer Mike Yung. Davis said, "Wow. I didn't know that was a thing, a tie. But I'm happy to be up here." Variety logged the rest of the speech. He called the film a "simple story about the power of music and art to bring us together in a moment when we live in an increasingly isolated world," and closed with, "May we keep looking for beauty in unexpected places, latestnetflix.com contends, and may we all be brave enough to keep on singing." 
Netflix had already parked the 18-minute short on the service on February 13, four days before TMDB's US listing of February 17. Variety's Clayton Davis had the exclusive on February 4. The music was recorded live on set. The festival run was 35 awards across 49 festivals, with a SXSW world premiere and a Tribeca screening. Davis already had a producer nomination for Nai Nai and Wai Po, plus camera work on Sean Wang's Didi and the Oscar-winning Period. End of Sentence. 
The origin story is a phone in bed. Davis had been reading Ivan Turgenev's 1850 story "The Singers" in George Saunders's A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. Then he hit a clip of New York busker Mike Young singing the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody" to a dead subway car. Variety uses Yung, the America's Got Talent spelling. Tudum uses Young. "That was the kismet moment," Davis told Tudum, "in which a nearly 200-year-old short story and a viral video collided into one crystal clear vision." He spent a year and a half DMing strangers with casting director Natalie Lin. Some thought it was a scam. A few backed out at the last second. The ones who came were Young, folk-blues veteran Chris Smither, New Orleans pianist Will Harrington, 2017 The Voice Australia winner Judah Kelly, and Oklahoma tenor Matthew Corcoran. Around them sat Afghanistan veteran Daniel "Hutch" Hutchinson, Arkansas regular David Scott "Muffin" McMurry, and Salvadoran tire-shop dancers Tio Rigo and Mr. George.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GchFxN1G1tw
They shot four days on 35mm at the La Habra Moose Lodge, about 40 minutes from Los Angeles. No script. An outline. Winter coats in a 100-degree weekend. Davis had the moose plaques pulled off the walls so the room would not look like a lodge commercial. He told first-timers they would play themselves and would not have lines. "Every time we started to doubt and think, 'God, this is a disaster,' some little blip of magic would happen, and then we would start to build around that." On nomination morning they asked the Lodge to open at 4 a.m. so the team could hear the list in the same room. Davis said he spent the drive anxious about his poker face if the nomination never came.
The gossip is not a feud. It is a Netflix short that went from a viral subway clip to a tied Oscar, with a cast who thought the DMs were fake, and a director who had to practice looking calm in case the list skipped them.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.