I must admit it took me a while to understand what was going on in the three short videos Pica Towers, but one thing that was immediately apparent was the the spooky undertone of the videos. What Marc Craste does brilliantly in the short films is tell a horror story without any dialogue. He conveys this through the use of music and sound effects, the illustrations of the characters, and the overall picture of the placed called Pica Towers.
In the first scene, two glowing circles slowly coming into focus which we soon find out are the eyes of a captured character hanging upside down (S&M style), coupled with torture mechanisms hanging on the wall (very reminiscent of the horror movie Hostel). There’s a second character with similar composition as the one hanging upside down, however, elements such as spikes on his body, a zipper for a mouth, and small beady eyes add to the villainous look of the character. The sound effects in the background are ominous, and the clattering of chains rattling as the captured character is hoisted further in the air adds to the scary nature of the scene. At the end of the video, the writer uses classical horror music typical of the moment when a character comes face to face with the villain or bad guy and realizes he is in trouble. This happens to the second character mentioned earlier, which is ironic because he was initially the one inflicting torture on someone else, leading viewers to think he is the bad guy. It made me wonder “Who’s the real villain here?”
In the second video, we see a cute little robotic dog which adds a little playfulness to the scene, but not for long. This time the viewer is invited to see more of “Pica Towers.” My first thought upon looking at the scene reminded me of an insane asylum. The long dimly-lit hallways with several doors and rooms added to the chilling effect. There is one seen in which a blind character (after losing his cane to the dog) is feeling his way down the hallway, and there is a simple shot of a flickering light. Something as simple as that shot added to the spooky vibe of the scene. But besides all the eerie elements in the video (such as blood on the wall) there is a clever scene in which the blind man falls down the stairs. This is not physically shown, but the picture is painted quite well through sound (a grunting person), a simple shake of the camera (portraying the rumbling effect of falling down the stairs), and a shot of the blind man readjustment his glasses as he walks out the door. This is an excellent example of how to tell a story without showing every single detail.
The third video is quite interesting as well. The viewer sees a happy go lucky pizza guy driving up to Pica Towers. In the background there is the sound of high winds which ignited a feeling of desolation as a watched it. Unfortunately, the poor little pizza man is shot, by what appears to be a character in Pica Towers with a shotgun. We then see the character being “chastised” by a female character (who I assumed to be his mother) as he backs down like a little lost kid. The scene is very reminiscent of the movie Texas Chain Saw Massacre.
So after watching this, I have several questions: is the young character with the gun the killer? Is his ‘mom’ the killer? Or are their several killers? Why would a blind man be walking through Pica Towers? Who ordered the pizza and why? And why would a pizza man drive to a place that clearly looks like an insane asylum? I decided to draw my own conclusion…Pica Towers is an insane asylum in which the insane have somehow unleashed themselves (I guess by killing the staff), and have begun releasing terror upon each other. This is just my interpretation. Who knows what the real story is behind Marc Craste’s Pica Towers….