Warm colors sharpen as the focus reveals an image of an empty chair. Then from offscreen, a boy emerges and sits in it. You recognize this boy because he looks like me.
After fidgeting, he speaks.
Boy: My favorite scary movie of all time is John Carpenter’s The Thing. Not only is Kurt Russell a badass in it, but it has some of the most gruesome special effects in movie history. But that’s not what makes it an effective movie. It’s the cold and the isolation. The feeling of loneliness, it’s hard to pull off in film.
At 00:10:14 the image cuts to an over-exposed shot of the park. For a couple of seconds it looks like all the people are lit up with nuclear light, playing games in atomic fallout. The frame shakes while the exposure changes. The grass and sky return to their natural hue; people look safe from skin-burning radiation. Children offscreen laugh and shout; some of them scream…