My Obsession with Death: Coming of Age by the Poolside

Alexis Evelyn’s My Obsession with Death is a 10-minute comedy that, along with its young adult protagonist, attempts to transcend its defining limits. Though the plot spans a few seconds, the story expands the moment, as thought and memory are wont to do. In them, Ruby finds a new way of being. 

Still in her early 20s, Ruby’s (Alison Thornton) obsession has already been part and parcel of her being for well over a decade. As she stands on the edge of a pool—a potential love affair bobbing through the surface of the water like a particularly peppy, pretty buoy—her body language screams aversion. But seeing her is almost unnecessary: even before the character is introduced on screen, the voiceover inducts the viewer into her mind, where all thought and memory is wrapped around and warped by death. She loses her mother to a car crash—cannot bring herself to refer to her as such, though the monotone of the narration never wavers—and since then has only thought of all the ways a body can die. Diabetes, AIDS, intimate partner violence, drowning—all reasonable possibilities, if an unreasonable, cumulative weight to carry through the years. 

The deadpan paranoia is the joke, of course, but the narration is an expression of crisis underneath it; the abrupt climax is characteristically impulsive but nonetheless, significant. Thornton’s narration is perfectly flat (the result of the boredom of someone who has seen too much too young and mistakes themselves for having seen it all). Quivers and outbursts are then unmissable; Ruby’s discomfort, trauma, and trepidation packed into a few words. Death, quarter life crisis, and the anxious tragicomedy of it all is compelling, but the ultra-sleekness of the cinematography, scrubbed clean of mess or uncertainty, turns it sterile and can turn the viewer off—though this film is far from the pioneer of the problem. The synthwave score makes for a minute break in the smoothness with its groovy texture and recall of a bygone era. Atemporal, sure, but nice. On the flip side, there is something fitting about the glossy visuals and Ruby’s (unwarranted) assured worldview.  

My Obsession with Death is smart, tragic and hopeful, but it is first compact. A decade plus some, summed up into 10 minutes (or a few seconds) is a tight squeeze, but the college admissions essay-ness has its own charm. Fittingly, Ruby embarks on a new, frightening phase of her life. 

Watch My Obsession with Death Short Film Trailer