SNAPSHOT
When a power cut ruins Ruby’s bedtime routine, she finds herself haunted by some unwanted guests. The only way for Ruby to get a peaceful night of sleep is to confront her visitors. (courtesy Laughing Squid)
What’s scarier than zombies and vampires and aliens and ghosts and werewolves and any and all other denizens of the very worst of our nightmares and horror stories?
Why, our past selves, parading past us in the dead of night like some sort of horrific replay of everything we regret about our life.
In Night of the Living Dread by Ida Melum, Ruby finds herself caught in just such a psychologically and emotionally harrowing moment when all of her past selves sneak up during a truly epic bout of insomnia and make their presence known when all she wants to do is fall asleep in the present.
Like all of us, she’s shut them out for years, decades in some cases, but as they all stand around her, she begins to realise that the solution is not to be scared of them and to shun them but to embrace them.
Maybe that way lies some sort of peace?
This short film is a truly moving and beautifully animated piece of work which reminds that while who we are might be the scariest thing of all, they don’t have to truly our present and might even be able to be taken as good companions into a far more at-peace future.