MEDIA INCLUDED:

Music:
- Father and Son, by Yusuf/Cat Stevens

Films:
- The Night of the Hunter (1955),  dir. Charles Laughton
- Les Yeux Sans Visage (1960), dir. Georges Franju
- The Haunting (1963), dir. Robert Wise
- Rosemary’s Baby (1968), dir. Roman Polanski- The Last House On The Left (1972), dir. Wes Craven
- Don’t Look Now (1973), dir. Nicolas Roeg
- Jaws (1975),  dir. Steven Spielberg
- The Sentinel (1977), dir.  Michael Winner
- The Shining (1980), dir. Stanley Kubrick
- Scream For Help (1984), dir. Michael Winner
- The Stepfather (1987), dir. Joseph Ruben
- Pet Sematary (1989), dir. Mary Lambert
- Tales from the Hood (1995),  dir.  Rusty Cundieff
- Stephen King’s The Shining (1997), dir. Mick Garris
- 28 Weeks Later (2007), dir. Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
- Eden Lake (2008), dir. James Watkins
- The Loved Ones (2009), dir. Sean Byrne
- The Witch (2015), dir. Robert Eggers
- The Devil’s Candy (2015), dir. Sean Byrne
- The Autopsy of Jane Doe (2016), dir. Andre Øvredal
- A Quiet Place (2018), dir. John Krasinski
- Brightburn (2019), dir. David Yarovesk
- Doctor Sleep (2019), dir. Mike Flanagan

NOTES:

I was very hot on a pretty didactic ‘horror-as-social-message/allegory’ kick at this time, but still think there's a heart I found beating in the edit that connects with me. Whilst highlighting a lot of extreme parental failure, violence, abuse etc. it was important for me to end it on a note of empathy, which to me is the defining element of transitioning out of childhood; seeing your parents as people. I didn’t want it to be about absolving their mistakes, but that one of the great kindnesses you can do someone in life is to give them some grace… within reason. Sometimes you’re just left in the rubble and the promise that you’ll be in the same shoes one day.

Father and Son is one of my favourite songs, they’re both being stubborn because they don’t want to look weak, because at its core they CARE and they WORRY. It’s two people wanting the other to hear and understand them while they aren’t listening themself. What looks like control and condescension is coming from love, and that’s the defining interplay of any fight with your parents. 

Side note, I love making video essays for the musicality of editing. On rewatch, I use that to some extremely bitter and mean spirited effect in this, but “life’s a bitch and then you die” is always a tone I love to strike inside a very sincere sentiment.

Yes, I have watched it with my dad!! It was sweet, that’s all you get xx