My Love, Our Time is Now (2013)

Director: Kyle Dunleavy

This film was an official selection at the 10th annual International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival in Phoenix in 2014. Here's an index to my reviews of 2014 films.

Of all the horror shorts I've seen at the International Horror & Sci-Fi Film Festival over the years, this must be the most unlikely. It's not even a film, it's a music video for a band called the Hemmingbirds. I've seen a music video programmed at the festival before but The Baby Shredder Song was a comedy narrative in verse, appropriate because of its outré subject matter and forbidden imagery; this, however, is entirely a music video, sans any narrative flow and without any apparent point. Sure, there are a horde of bizarrely mysterious black figures hovering in the sky while the camera jerks its timelapse circle around a guy in a lumberjack shirt in a field, but what are they and why are they there? All I can figure is that he has some personal demons to deal with that are affecting his ability to get with the pastoral chick in the dangerous white dress who he clearly wants to be with. If he's a manifestation of the lead singer, the lyrics suggest that, 'I can't leave you there to fend off all the demons.' That's not much to go on.

It might have helped if the song had been more memorable (or more strange), but it's just not my thing. The official YouTube channel for the Hemmingbirds describes them as an 'atmospheric indie rock band from Chicago', but they sounded like easy listening hipster music to me. I didn't dislike the song and the band clearly played it deeply enough to find their way inside it, but it didn't do anything for me at all. I wasn't even impressed by the video, however evocative the lighting and Instagram colour play and the bizarre way the black demons blip in and out, but it all felt rather like the closing minutes of a television show with the end credits digitally removed. I'm sure there are teenage girls hating at me through their phone screens right now because their favourite Hemmingbird is dreamy and how dare I put them down, but I really don't care. This is a way to help you meditate for five minutes; it isn't a horror movie and it really had no place in a set of shorts at a genre festival. Most pointless selection ever.

My Love, Our Time is Now can be watched for free on YouTube.