Treehouse of Horror '95: Homer³ (aka Only Solutions)

"Homer³" is a tremendously novel installment of "Treehouse of Horror". Forget, for just a moment, that it made extensive use of 3D animation at a time when the technique had nowhere near the ubiquity it has now - when it debuted on October 29th 1995, as part of The Simpsons' sixth Halloween outing, it was the first ToH segment in a seeming eternity that had managed to avoid descending into a violent bloodbath by the out. There are no character deaths at all in fact, which at this point in the series made it an absolute rarity. I was trying to remember the last ToH segment before it in which nobody actually got killed, and I think it may have been "The Devil and Homer Simpson" of "Treehouse of Horror IV" (I nearly said "Terror at 5 1⁄2 Feet" from the same episode, since I was in two minds as to whether Moleman's car combusting counted when the guy's survived worse in the series proper, but then I remembered that Ned got his head ripped off by the gremlin at the end). That's an awful lot of carnage sandwiched into the seven segments in between. The Halloween spirit and freedom from the shackles of continuity give the ToH episodes leeway to go to freakier, nastier places than most regular Simpsons episodes could accommodate, and it's always fun to see what kind of gruesome creativity the staff can inject into the series' DNA, but kudos to "Homer³" for mixing things up and demonstrating that freakiness can come from sources besides the bloody and macabre. (If you wanted to stretch it for casualties, you could argue that we technically don't know what becomes of the 3D goldfish that get sucked into the black hole, but since Homer survives I see no reason to assume they didn't either.)  What makes "Homer³" particularly unique, however, is that it evokes a feeling I don't think had been attempted by any ToH segment before it, and that is melancholy. "Homer³" is an unusually sombre Halloween story; whenever it gets strange, it gets hauntingly moody in tandem. A huge wad of the credit for that goes to its soundtrack, evocative of Robyn Miller's score for popular contemporary video game Myst.

I find "Homer³" such a bittersweet segment, in part, because with hindsight it's hard for me not to read it as an analogy for the dawn of CG animation and the changing landscape of the industry. 1995 marked a significant year for the technique, with two breakthrough pictures that boldly announced how CG animation was going to radically re-shape Hollywood's approach to its visual effects and to storytelling possibilities going forward - Amblin Entertainment's Casper, the first live action film to incorporate a computer generated main character (courtesy of Industrial Light & Magic), and Toy Story, the first fully 3D animated feature film, and the flick responsible for putting incoming powerhouse Pixar on the map for mainstream viewers. Getting in just slightly ahead of Buzz and Woody was the Simpsons' own stab at the emerging craft; "Homer³" was a timely piece that served to herald this exciting new age, with animation from Pacific Data Images, one of the pioneering houses of computer animation. They would later join forces with Pixar's first major rival, DreamWorks Animation, helping to create Antz, Shrek and many other pictures, before closing their doors in 2015. They did a really exemplary job with their Simpsons assignment - the novelty of "Homer³" has inevitability faded since 1995, with these kinds of visual techniques now being so commonplace, but I don't think that the animation itself has aged anywhere near as badly as you might imagine. Certain gags seem somewhat lost to time - specifically, the gags that were designed to comment on the flashiness of the techniques, such as when Homer comments that he's "wasting a fortune just standing here", and and the knowing contrast between that particularly ambitious underwater shot of the 3D fish pond and the equally showy (but jarringly vulgar) shot of Homer drooling over the unprocessed fish sticks - and visually, it all looks fairly rudimentary compared to what was to follow. But PDI got things right exactly where it mattered for "Homer³". The CG Homer and Bart are recognisably Homer and Bart, the expressiveness is there (occasionally the CG Homer will slip into looking a trifle dead-eyed, but he's able to convey confusion, fear and annoyance wherever it's needed), and getting to see these familiar characters from a fresh new perspective is still such an exciting prospect - so much so that it's kind of a shame that time and budget don't allow for the entire family to enter in and get the three dimensional treatment (apparently Ned Flanders was slated to go in at one time, but the CG capabilities of the day weren't ready for his moustache). PDI's work was deemed impressive and important enough for inclusion in the animated anthology film Cyberworld 3D, which played in IMAX theatres in 2000, giving the Simpsons their first big screen outing (I've no doubt that snagging a big brand like The Simpsons enabled Cyberworld to gain more recognition). I didn't see it, and I'm kind of narked that I missed the opportunity to see Homer and Bart rubbing shoulders with the music video to the Pet Shop Boys' "Liberation" (it's from the Very era, so you know it's a gaudy delight).

The computer generated world cannot itself help but seem an entirely basic creation, particularly next to the colourful, fully realised child's playroom in which we'd shortly be immersed when Toy Story hit theatres, but in a way that feeds into the merits of the segment. It offers an assortment of tributes to the iconic 3D images of the time, such as the Utah teapot (also glimpsed during the Mrs Nesbitt scene in Toy Story) and the library from the aforementioned Myst, atop a grid that tips the hat to one or two old-school Disney sci-fis (we'll get to that shortly) and a whole bunch of math jokes geared toward tickling the eggheads in the audience. That the 3D universe should consist of such a vacant, open space adds to the strangeness of the place, in being nothing like the world that Homer has jumped in from, and to its haunting sombreness. There is nothing about the 3D plane that seems dangerous or overtly threatening, outside of the fact that it is so unfamiliar. Mostly, it is what it is - an adjacent universe, existing benignly and waiting passively for someone to stumble across it. Its relatively emptiness is suggestive of the barrage of ways in which this germinal universe could expand and develop, but also a loneliness and fragility; it is a universe that does not seem as though it could withstand the corruptions of a less benevolent world, as is borne out when the intrusions of the 2D world prove fatal to its entire being. Even before the 3D plane gets round to collapsing on itself, some of those eggheads might have already picked up on the warning signs; hidden among the background gags is the equation ρ_m0 > 3H₀² /8πG, the inclusion of which writer David X. Cohen attributes to his astronomer friend David Schiminovich. It's apparently very ominous and indicates that this universe is ultimately too dense to remain standing. It doesn't stand a chance with Homer added into the mix.

That the 3D universe should collapse (taking the accident-prone Homer with it) while the 2D world endures seems contrary to how things actually panned out for the respective animation techniques. Back in 1995, the arrival of Toy Story was a magical moment, and the success and acclaim the film received was well-deserved. Pixar, PDI, Industrial Light & Magic and their ilk were all doing tremendously exciting things, and the possibilities of where they might take us next were exhilarating. All the same, I find it deeply distressing, as a fan of traditional animation, to contemplate how little time it took for 2D animation to all but die out in Hollywood, with 3D replacing it as the standard - not even a full decade separates Toy Story from Home on The Range (2004), which was then tagged as Disney's last traditionally animated feature (an attempt at a 2D revival followed in the late 2000s/early 2011s, but the damage was already done and it proved painfully short-lived). 2D animation still has a home on television, and The Simpsons has gotten to keep its familiar style, but even they were eventually forced to bend to the computer's domination and switch to digital colouring (bringing with it a more plastic-looking aesthetic). What "Homer³" gets across entirely accurately is the sense that the world as we knew it was changing and that things were never going to be the same again. Like Homer himself, once we'd stepped out over the line and immersed ourselves in this mind-bending new technology, we couldn't get back to where we were. I don't think that it had to be thus - in a fairer universe, 2D and 3D animation should have been able to co-exist just fine. But mistakes were made. Metaphorical cones were thrown, puncturing the very fabric of our fragile reality. I find it poetic that the preceding segment, "Nightmare on Evergreen Terrace", should have opened with a tribute to the cartoons of Tex Avery; the Simpsons crew took a loving look back to the golden age of animation, before looking ahead and tangling with the CG beast lurking right around the corner, all poised to turn the industry inside out and devitalise the form that had been its cornerstone for so many decades.

 "Homer³" was inspired by the classic Twilight Zone episode "Little Girl Lost", something that Homer explicitly calls attention to when he observes that the portal to the 3rd dimension is like "something out of that Twilight-y show about that Zone". It seems significant to me that the segment should open with a deceptively ordinary set-up, one that could have figured in any number of regular Simpsons installments. Patty and Selma are on their way over with a pillowcase of seashells harvested from their trip to Sulfar Bay, wanting the family to join them for round of deceased hermit crab extraction, and no one in the household besides Marge is particularly eager to greet them. Homer is having to compete with with Bart and Lisa (and Santa's Little Helper and Snowball II) for the house's best hiding spots, and it's his fear of being uncovered by his sister-in-laws that prompts him to take his chances in the 3D world. Like "Little Girl Lost", "Homer³" is rooted in the troubling idea of the the most ordinary and domestic of spaces suddenly and inexplicably becoming the entry point to the strange and unknowable, and the even more troubling possibility of that strangeness coming between ourselves and our loved ones. It's only appropriate that Homer's cutting-edge adventures should initially be happening on the fringes of a more grounded Simpsons story, as opposed to one that immediately submerges itself in its Halloween trappings. There's the sense of disturbance in a world that's basically oblivious to the magnitude of the incoming change. It takes Marge and co a comically long time to grasp what Homer (who, like the little girl lost, is still able to verbally communicate with those in the adjacent dimension) means when he tells them that he doesn't know where he is ("We better call Ned, he has a ladder"), in part because Homer himself can scarcely comprehend it, let alone put it into words. He eventually settles for comparing the 3D world to the futuristic cyberspace of Disney's 1982 film Tron, and we then get a very emphatic gag based around the fact that nobody gathered within the Simpsons' living room has apparently seen the danged thing (except, possibly, Wiggum). This is the one gag in the segment that I kind of take issue with, because while the execution is certainly very funny, Tron isn't that obscure a picture, surely? I also refuse to believe that Frink, of all people, wasn't first in line to see it. I'll admit that it probably wouldn't sting so much if I weren't such an ardent fan of the movie they're ribbing. Look, I wasn't born when Tron came out, so I can't comment first-hand on how people felt about it during its theatrical run. My understanding is that it did moderately well at the box office, but it didn't meet Disney's Star Wars-sized expectations and was written off as a disappointment at the time. Still, it built up a cult following over the years, enough for Disney to finally capitalise on its sequel potential 28 years later. I just hope the Simpsons gag didn't give anybody the impression that Tron is a lousy movie, not worth checking out, when actually the film is cool as fuck (I mean, it's got David Warner playing all three of its main villains, what more do you want?). Part of me would like to believe that Cohen (or whoever was responsible for that specific joke) got Tron mixed up with another Disney attempt at chasing the Star Wars model, The Black Hole of 1979. It honestly seems to me that the grid in Homer's 3D world could have been inspired by either picture (the green colour scheme puts me more strongly in mind of the latter), and when the entire terrain gives way into a mighty vortex, with Bart and Homer lingering at the edges - yep, that one visual at least was unquestionably taken from The Black Hole. Which really is a movie that nobody saw. Don't get me wrong, I like The Black Hole a lot too. Anthony Perkins is in it. Ernest Borgnine is in it. But nobody saw it. More's the pity. (Every now and then, talk surfaces about the possibility of a remake, but I would be very surprised if that's a priority for Disney any time soon. Not now that they have the actual Star Wars.)

If you did see The Black Hole, then odds are that the thing you most remember about it is that mindscrew of an ending, where the black hole is revealed to be a portal to Hell (whether literal or figurative) or something along those lines. The black hole of "Homer³" goes to screwier places still, by having Homer transplanted into the "real" world, more specifically Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles (that he lands in a dumpster is reminiscent of the opening to Howard The Duck (1986), making me think that this could be the set-up to a crazier adventure still to come). This was a visual novelty in its own right, being the first occasion in which original live action footage was incorporated into the series, and yet as a child I remember feeling disappointed with it, if only because for a second there I thought that Homer was going to transform into live action and be represented by a flesh and blood actor to match his new surroundings. It still seems like a cheat to me that he doesn't, given that this was how things worked in the 3D animated world, and because seriously, the prospect of getting an official interpretation of what Homer would look like as a real person would be even more mind-blowing than seeing him in 3D animation. It's probably for the best that they didn't go that route, however. For one, I'd imagine it would be an arduous task casting an actor who could satisfy everybody's preconceptions for a "real" Homer, possibly more arduous than rendering him in CGI for a few scant minutes. The final arrangement would also have had to play out somewhat differently, as there'd be no reason for all those extras to gawk at Homer as they do if he could pass for one of them. A great part of the sequence's power comes from its depiction of two worlds colliding, with each as disturbing and inexplicable to the other. Then Homer discovers that they have erotic cakes in this world, and immediately feels a sense of belonging.

On the DVD commentary showrunner Bill Oakley insists that from his perspective this was a happy ending, since the implication is that Homer will be perfectly at home in our universe, although he admits that it was "controversial" and that the closing credits music, a Myst-ified take on the Simpsons theme, suggests another mood entirely. Arguably, it isn't radically different to the ending of "Time and Punishment" of "Treehouse of Horror V", in which Homer also never found his way back to his original reality and learned to make do with the one he had. But at least there he remained in presence of Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie, none of whom seemed to care that he was out of step with them in lacking an extendable lizard tongue. "Homer³" ends with him stranded among the unfamiliar which, unlike the passive 3D world, is very actively contemplating him back, and how little sense he makes in their reality. The closing music honestly gives me the chills; it feels like something very profound is being communicated here, even if, as per Oakley's words, it's entirely by accident. The mood it conveys is one of dreaminess and unreality, playing into the idea that we're all at the mercy of our own perception, and we never know when our world is going to expand and force us to reevaluate what we think we know. At the end, 3D Homer has apparently made his peace with us. But will we make our peace with 3D Homer?

It's an optimistic ending perhaps, positing that the strange may not seem quite so if you look at it in a certain way, but also a profoundly poignant one. To me, it says something about the nature of change, as represented by the 3D Homer and the need for him to accommodate himself in our world, and be accommodated in return. The change that happens, for better or for worse, the sadness of what gets left behind and the anticipation of what might lie ahead. You can cope with change by finding the parts you like in it and making the most of that, even if it is something as dumb as erotic cakes. Ultimately, that's what consider most impressive about "Homer³". Not only did it take us to some bold new territory on the aesthetic front, it hit a few unexpected emotional buttons along the way. It's great that after so many Halloweens, the "Treehouse of Horror" installments still knew how to be surprising.

There Are Monsters '08 (aka The Monsters Are Due In Maple Land)

Bite-sized Canadian horror There Are Monsters (2008) is a beguiling brew. The 10 minute short, written and directed by Jay Dahl, hinges itself upon two seemingly contradictory conceits - just how nightmarishly uncanny the human form can be when it has its back turned firmly to you, and just how nightmarishly uncanny it can be when it's staring you straight in the face. The narrative centrepiece concerns a stand-off between an overly-familiar convenience store clerk (Kim Parkhill) and protagonist Garth (Steve Arnold). It has the distinct air of being lifted from a real-life case of spontaneous paranoia, where someone (possibly Dahl themselves) was gripped by the kind of fleeting conception that makes the most commonplace of interactions seem utterly terrifying and has you distrusting your fellow human for no rational reason. It's such a strikingly eerie sequence that the beginning and ending of the film hangs somewhat loosely around it, two superfluous bookends tasked with drawing a complete short story out of what is essentially a really engaging piece of flash fiction. Garth has been sent out on an errand by his wife Maddie (Kristin Langille), to collect a tub of ice cream in preparation for a dinner party they're due to host that evening. The clerk observes that the tub he's picked out is all melted and urges him to head into the deep freeze in the backroom and choose another. Something about her demeanour (and grotesquely exaggerated smile) rubs Garth the wrong way, so he hangs onto his current tub and makes a hasty exit, not even bothering to collect his change. Is the clerk actually conspiring to devour him, as Garth suspects, or is it his imagination that's warping their exchange out of all proportion? The scene is unsettling because the clerk's gestures and actions cannot, for the most part, be completely divorced from the explicable. So much so that when the clerk takes Garth's change and reveals the blood all across her fingertips, it feels almost unsporting of Dahl, the point at which he tips things overwhelmingly in favour of the horrific, although it does also allow for the film's most disgusting observation, when the encounter is subsequently recontextualised as an amusing story at Garth and Maddie's party, and Garth recalls the little "flecks of meat" on her fingers.

The narrative built around this bizarre encounter uses a familiar concept within the horror genre, immediately recognisable to anybody who's seen any of the many versions of Invasion of The Bodysnatchers - the implication that something non-human is slowly but stealthily taking over by assimilating the human populace one by one - but it presents it in a way that's very much steeped in the unrelenting mundaneness of its world as it marches toward the apocalypse. The entire piece is presented in a shaky-cam, almost pseudo-documentary style replete with uneasy close-ups, conveying both an unbearable intimacy with the characters' prosaicness and a non-stop feeling that some kind of inexplicable intrusion is forever in the mix. The nature of the monsters is not explored, with the film offering only the vaguest, blink-and-you'll-miss-it of hints as to how they came to be in this quiet Canadian town. At the beginning Garth is seen reading a web article on the Hadron Collider, which feels significant in that it seems to imply that the monsters wandered in from some tear in the universe's fabric, possible mirror beings from a parallel world. But this too seems superfluous, to my eyes a red herring. Instead, I like to think of the monsters' inception as being teased in the plain matter-of-factness of the film's title; the existence of monsters is a part of everyday reality, as prevalent and as humdrum as the existence of talk radio and convenience store freezers. These are monsters that conceal themselves behind the false gestures and shallow exchanges that characterise a significant part of our social interplay. Hence the dinner party sequence that follows Garth's uncanny encounter with the store clerk; there is not such a world of difference, it seems, between the clerk's misshapen leer and the assortment of awkward snickers exhibited by the gathering in Garth's own living room. Garth himself even produces a strained smile when Maddie rebuffs his attempt to bring her into the discussion and hands him a plate of pie instead. The party scene provides us with our title drop, as an attendee corroborates Garth's concerns about the dangers of smirking strangers. But the discussion is intrinsically hollow, and the characters seem inane in their attempts to laugh it off; it is a futile means of covering up the tensions of their lives.

The primary concerns of There Are Monsters appear to be rooted in isolation and urban alienation. The clue there, I think, is in the tiny bites we hear from the radio station Garth listens to on his drive up to the store, which indicate an underlying theme of seclusion - first, a reference to a desert island and then the question as to how astronauts manage to stay sane in the remoteness of space, with the implication that this is the very problem facing our equally cut-off players down on Earth. As Garth enters the convenience store, his presence is captured both on the security monitor and on the convex mirror, evoking a sense of both an omnipresent surveillance and a vast nothingness all around; Garth's environs seem empty and deserted, the world beyond him seems indifferent and impassive. The artifice of the urban landscape is evoked when one of the guests at Garth and Maddie's party mentions that she has to walk through a parkade to get to her apartment. There Are Monsters makes the case that there is something equally artificial about how we interact with and relate to our fellow humans, whether the implication be that we simply wouldn't notice if people around us were replaced with human-shaped monsters, or that the monsters are directly birthed from the emotional alienation that such a milieu entails. The sting in the tail is that things are ultimately shown to be no different between Garth and Maddie. Garth may be guarded against the feigned familiarity of strangers, but the utter stagnation in his relationship with his spouse is what finally causes him to fall prey to the monsters. Notably, Garth and Maddie seem to have little genuine connection at the beginning of the story. The bland discussion between the couple regarding whether the ice cream should be nut or vanilla flavour is indicative of their general indifference, both toward each other and toward their wider community. Notably, they are never shown looking at one another within the same frame, implying the same kind of disconnect as the mysterious girl who enters their yard, and who seems to be purposely positioning herself so that they can't make out her face. Garth's only moment of genuine interest in Maddie's perspective comes in his attempt to coax her into backing up his tale of a paranoia by raising the girl, and the concern she prompted in Maddie, at the dinner party; her unwillingness to do so unnerves Garth, but not to the point that he isn't shortly obsessing about how an elementary school teacher can afford to have a boob job and a waiter manages to live in an abode of 2800 square feet. Big mistake. He should have kept his eyes on his wife. Because she's a monster now too.

The monsters might be endemic in Garth and Maddie's dry world of middle-class detachment, but they are at the same time antithetical to it. Outside of Garth's convenience store encounter, the monsters seem predominantly aligned with forces that are altogether more basic and veracious - nature, time and children. The first sign of disturbance for Garth and Maddie (besides the reports of unusual dust clouds overheard on their kitchen radio) is in the appearance of the mysterious young girl. Her perspective is represented in the film's opening shots, establishing that she found her way into their yard by emerging from the depths of the snow-covered wilderness. It gives the impression of something otherworldly and alien to our ordained customs - perhaps the part of our own selves that we ditched in the woods when we made the leap to living in houses - infiltrating civilisation in order to bring it down and reclaim its dominance in the scheme of things. This connection between the intruders and the natural world is retained through the intermittent shots of the tree branches outside and the sun sinking into the horizon, signalling the impassive march of time and a sense of impending inevitability. Maddie's final words to Garth are "It's happening" - suggesting that whatever is happening is all part of some predefined process, intuitively understood by them both (even if Garth professes otherwise).

Even before Garth's run-in with the convenience store clerk, the film has already yielded its major jump scare, confirming that there's certainly something spooky happening at least somewhere within this community in the Great White North. Maddie, left alone in the house while Garth steps out to buy nut or vanilla ice cream, attempts to reach out to the girl, only for the girl to turn and rush at her, pressing her freakishly expanded mouth against the glass pane in a voracious frenzy. With this moment in mind, it comes as little shock at the end of the film when Maddie is revealed to have already joined the monsters' ranks. Before Maddie exposes the horrors lurking beneath her perpetually bored expression, we get a reappearance from the girl, who sneaks into the couple's bedroom, now baring a recognisably human face and introducing herself as "Emily", entailing a comically expletive-filled reaction from Garth (who was just as inclined to dish out the expletives at her initial showing). Personally, I like to think that Maddie met less her own doom in Emily's rubbery chops than she did solidarity. I don't consider it much of a coincidence that the girl could pass for Maddie's younger counterpart, perhaps a manifestation of Maddie's childhood self, or a daughter she might have had within another timeline. Her entry into Maddie's life suggests that a rebirth or reconnection is occurring. The monsters present as distorted mirror images of this reality's inhabitants, so that when the strange girl slams her enlarged mouth against the glass, it plays like a reflection of Maddie's own internalised anguish, and the emotion she's conditioned herself to keep bottled up amid the suffocating tedium of her relationship with Garth and their entire mindless friendship circle. The upheaval that has occurred by the film's end is facilitated through the forging of a genuine connection, not with one of her fellow humans, but with one of the interloping entities, in whom Maddie finds an ally and co-conspirator. Their influence seems to extend both ways - having been inducted into the household, Maddie appears more genial and less threatening (she flashes Garth a toothy grin, but one of regular human proportions). Maddie, meanwhile, is fully prepared to have it all out with Garth. What does it mean, exactly, when she tells him that "It's happening"? That the apocalypse is imminent, or that the flaccid veneer keeping their stagnant relationship propped up is about to come crashing messily down? Really, you can take your pick. But it seems imperative to me that the warping Maddie we see at the film's out is the real Maddie coming out from the depths, not some imposter who snuck in when a particle accelerator tore a few holes in the characters' reality. Not that their reality isn't undoubtedly riddled with holes.

In 2013, There Are Monsters was expanded into a full-length feature (also directed by Dahl). The domestic drama was done away with, with a team of film students replacing our stagnant couple as the protagonist, but the signature convenience store set-piece was preserved. On this occasion, it was Langille herself who got to face the horrors of Parkhill's pearlies.

Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives: Funeral (aka Real Lives)

"Funeral" (aka "Real Lives") is a sombre affair. I wouldn't have expected anything less from one of the earliest PIFS in the "Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives" campaign, but this one really goes out of its way to be as grim and as colourless as possible. It's sombre to a degree that honestly blunts its effectiveness, resulting in the only film in that D&DWL line-up that I'd say fringes on dullness. There's an affecting chilliness to the film's design, with its washed-out tones (aesthetic and atmospheric) being entirely appropriate to the ambience of a funeral, and to a family in a state of deep emotional shock. But what it lacks is a cumulative effect, one final sting in the tail that gives its scenario the kind of potent lingering aftertaste that seriously throws off your mood should it happen to catch you unawares during an ad break. Of the initial batch of D&DWL films, the most impactful came with an extra magic ingredient that enabled them to land their punches at the end, be it the bracing anger of "Fireman's Story", the haunting solitude of "Jenny" or the creeping sardonicism of "Pier". All "Funeral" has to offer in that regard is a rather clunky piece of closing symbolism. The sadness of the occasion is sufficiently communicated, with the actors playing the bereaved family doing a fine job of conveying their collective grief, but knowing just how sharp the campaign's teeth could already be at this stage, "Funeral" feels an atypically vanilla addition.

The funeral in question is for 19-year-old Stephen Webster, who was killed when a drink driver at the wheel of an estate car collided with his vehicle head-on. Characteristic of the D&DWL films of its era, the PIF favours grim realism and a frosty calmness that barely conceals the emotional devastation nestled within every last inch of the seeming mundaneness. Not a lot happens onscreen, and certainly nothing overtly dramatic. Mourners mingle glumly at a reception, and later the deceased's family are seen clearing out his bedroom and being overcome by the remnants of his sadly truncated existence. Its most distinguishing move is in how it chooses to link these images to the issue of drink driving, forgoing the usual tactic of having the bereaved (or, in the case of "Pier", the victim themselves) tell their story directly, and placing expository duties on an unseen, BBC-accented third party relating the facts of the case as printed in a local newspaper. I suspect the intention behind this PIF was to present with us two parallel perspectives, each of which support one another on the narrative front but seem somewhat disparate tonally. The newsreader speaks with a gravitas that underscores the tragedy of the situation, but it's delivered in a very matter-of-fact manner that feels slightly impersonal when juxtaposed with the first-hand glimpses of the family's suffering. "Funeral" has you approaching the scenario initially as an outsider, with its opening image reflecting the perspective of a reader stumbling across news of Stephen as they flick through the pages of their paper, a tiny article squirrelled away amid a spread of competing stories. This piddling report represents Stephen's public legacy, and for the casual reader there's not a lot to be done other than to shake their heads sadly and carry on with the rest of their day. For those who knew and loved the deceased, there is obviously no such release. "Funeral" looks to shed light upon the real people behind such stories, and on the lives irrecoverably affected, by dropping you in among the mourners and letting it fester by staying with the family for a smidgen of the aftermath. We follow them home and observe as they get started on what will obviously be a long and arduous process of adjusting to life without Stephen. While packing away his clothes, Stephen's parents come across his watch, which evokes a particularly strong reaction from his father. We're given no narrative information as to why the watch should be such a significant personal signifier of Stephen's existence; its ends are purely symbolic, with the father's grasping of the watch being indicative of his desire to hold onto his son, and to a time that has tragically expired. I wish this image moved me more than it did, but I find the obviousness of the metaphor a little hard to get past.

Noteworthy is that there are actually two versions of this PIF, each offering different takes upon its latter end. In one, the newsreader remains active throughout and reads out the report, as displayed in the opening print image, more-or-less in full, while the family themselves do not receive any dialogue. The business with Stephen's watch is still included, but the final acknowledgement goes to his 12-year-old brother Thomas, last seen sitting dolefully outside his vacated bedroom. In the other edit, the one that appears to be more common in terms of online uploads, the newsreader only reads out the details regarding the accident itself, from which point onward the bereaved family are left to speak for themselves. Or rather, his father does. We're privy to what I presume is meant to be overheard dialogue from the funeral reception, with Mr Webster talking, in full broken record mode, about how Stephen deserves to be remembered. I am torn as to which version I think works better. On the one hand, the framing of the final shot, in which Thomas appears to be boxed in and dwarfed by the darkened bedroom, makes for more effective closing symbolism than his father's fumbling with the watch. On the other, something about Mr Webster's funeral speak genuinely gets to me. He's clearly babbling, and I suspect the repetitiveness of his dialogue will prove profoundly irritating to some, yet it seems entirely authentic to a person in a state of deep grief who can barely process the shock of what's occurred. He's reaching to say something profound, but the words aren't coming, and he's left with with only the floundering reflex to keep reasserting his son into the present moment. The fact that the viewer learns so little about Stephen, and what he's going to be remembered for, makes it all the more unsettling - all we see is a sorrowful void, and the human debris swirling helplessly around it.

Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives: Kathy

"Kathy" sounds like the kind of PIF that, on paper, should be absolutely insufferable. The evils of drink driving illustrated by 40 whole seconds in which we're subjected to nothing more than a close-up shot of a small child's face contorting in anguish. And yet, it wound up being one of the "Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives" campaign's strongest. Compared to "Classroom", the other child-focussed installment of D&DWL, this one is played less for sentimentality and more for sheer emotional intensity; it's uncomfortable to watch and really makes the most of its stripped-down approach. The beleaguered Kathy effectively became the face of D&DWL - there was a time when you couldn't turn around without seeing the print version of her drooping brow adorning the walls of every establishment, cementing the image as quite possibly the campaign's most prolific and searingly memorable. (Look out for Kathy in the backdrop of the police station scene in the "Mainland" episode of Father Ted, peering over Ted's shoulder, if you want to ruin your fun.)

Arriving circa 1990, "Kathy", alongside "Arrest", marked a departure in terms of the tone and form of the campaign. Both switched their attentions from the victim's side of the equation to the perpetrator's, with "Kathy" focussing specifically on the perpetrator's family, depicting how they too will suffer terribly for the poor decisions of their kin. The two nevertheless preserved a trend that had been prevalent throughout the earliest wave of D&DWL films, which is to say that the driver themselves maintains an off-screen presence. Both films pivot on the suggestion that the viewer is being placed in the perpetrator's shoes, evoking the sense that they are being held accountable for actions that could well be their own; this was front and central to the set-up of "Arrest", shown from the perspective of a drink driver arriving at a police station, but more subtly expressed in "Kathy". The film was also reflective of the campaign's increasing interest in taking a more artsy, experimental approach to its messaging, after years of exceedingly austere output (I wonder if they took some inspiration from Herz Frank's 1978 piece Ten Minutes Older, with its close range focus on the emoting of small children). Much like "Eyes", it's is an exercise in minimalism, with a single shot of a human face that becomes increasingly challenging to look at the longer it lingers, as disembodied voices fill us in on the necessary narrative details. Compared to the gruesome physicality of "Eyes", there is nothing in the visuals of "Kathy" to directly link the film to the matter of drink driving - it would be easy enough to envision the same image and format being tweaked and used as an advertisement for the NSPCC. The immediate situation in the film is one of domestic strife; Kathy's silent distress is juxtaposed with the turbulent sounds of her parents at odds. Her mother is angry with her father, we discover, because he hit and killed a young boy while driving under the influence of alcohol, and now Kathy is having to face the judgement of her peers at school for her his actions. (There's never any explicit crossover between the D&DWL films, but I like to think of this one as a follow-up to "Classroom". The circumstances are certainly compatible for Matthew to be our victim.)

Arguably, "Kathy" qualifies as another D&DWL monologue, since only one character has any discernable dialogue, albeit not the character we see onscreen. Its particular approach seems most comparable to "Mates", in that this dialogue forms part of a two-way conversation, in which the second participant's silence effectively comes to signify a response in itself. "Kathy" offers a reversal on how this dynamic would be used in "Mates", where the drink driver was the garrulous party and his hospitalised passenger's laboured breathing became a shorthand for his condemnation. In "Kathy", the father's silence is indicative of his inability to articulate a defence, suggesting that he has none. Kathy's silence serves much the same purpose - her lack of a voice in the matter reflects her own inability to comprehend what has happened, and the extent to which she finds herself tied to the fate of her father, in having to account for his actions when they are beyond all understanding, to either child or adult.

The effects of the intense close-up, meanwhile, are two-fold. It immerses us in the claustrophobia of Kathy's world, in which the harsh, frantic voice of her mother seems emblematic of her entrapment, a swirling voice inside her head denoting the disruption all around her from which she has no escape. It is made clear that there is no refuge for Kathy - her domestic life is in turmoil, she's subject to disdainful scrutiny from the other children at school and she's unable to sleep, denying her even the temporary escapism of dreaming. As the film continues, however, we get the sense of her mother's voice becoming more of an inner monologue for Kathy, articulating her considerable anguish and desperation on her behalf, while the viewer finds themselves cast, unexpectedly, in the role of her father. The giveaway there is that when Kathy's mother screams "Look at me!", it is Kathy who then looks directly at the camera - ostensibly a gesture of helplessness on her part, it as if the challenge is being extended to the viewer to return her gaze. The forcefulness of the shot means that, for for a couple of seconds, the viewer is rendered the helpless one in the equation, presented with only two options - either we face the harrowing consequences of our own hypothetical actions, or we fail Kathy twice over by looking downward at our living room carpet instead.