At the core of Obscura, the film is about the blurred lines between the realities we make for ourselves and the choices we decide to design the simulacrums we marry ourselves to. As the characters of Obscura breakdown the walls, their exterior masks crumble as the shining refractors of the build-in mirrors within us shine its light, showing the world who we really are. The quest is to find a way back to the beginning were the mask and the core can co-exist.
In the world of Obscura, the life in the lens is often imitated and blended in with the realities of their afflictions. Sometimes the weight of their world forecast a dark looming overview in their real lives and when the absurdities of their own mind becomes the shift in their focus, it forces us to see these characters for who they really are.
It’s not Freddy Krueger of Pinhead or the Devil. It’s the mind and its possession it has on the bodies, the living hosts. Everyone has a mind of its own but it’s how the vessel chooses to see the world come alive. That awakening we wish to have can turn us into the monsters we can only imagine.
How far will one go to run away from all his problems and emotional entanglements that ground him in reality?
In Obscura, the film’s movie producer, hot shot and charming Easton Caldwell is on top of the world. He is the heir to a multi-billion dollar motion picture company that his grandfather build 95 years ago. His father handed over the reins to him in 2006. For ten years, this early thirties wunderkind has dominated the awards and film festival circuits. He is ten for ten in his box office collaborations with the greatest young director of his generation, Patrick Quinn. Together with the greatest movie star since Marilyn Monroe (Gemma Valentine), he is the reigning king of his pride.
Everything skews away from him when he is challenged to do something he has never done before. He needs to challenge himself with a movie so warped into the degeneration of our minds.
ESTABLISHING QUOTE:
“Animals may lay low but they do not go quietly into the night. They fight.” —” EASTON CALDWELL
Obscura biggest ally is that society is awakening and feels inundated by the visceral images of media and crowd manipulation through subliminal stimuli. Seeping through the mainstream films from the 60’s, films like A Clockwork Orange, Lost Highway, and Inception depict the subliminal messages realities of mind control, altered states, and the exploitation of psychological manipulation. This film explores the mind bending realities of repression and pent up aggression caused by society’s influence and exposed by brandishing anger towards his victims.
What is seen cannot be unseen.
What we feature in this film is the cognitive awakening of the mind and how the deepest darkest thoughts can push you over the edge. The “wicked” manuscript (a 66 year old Billy Wilder manuscript, The Descent to Madness) is the environmental game-changer but in the real scheme of things, the thoughts manifested through the film are already deep within them. The devil is the awakening of their conscious minds. Hollywood is a sick cycle carousel full of hedonism and their exposure to the truth takes their parasitic minds to places never gone before.
Obscura’s moods and colors inhabit a subversive art culture where underground surrealism mixed with fantastical pop art inspires the film’s look and feel. That will show in the art titles and credits.
Obscura 