Unboxing Nosferatu (2019)

Empty box-like apartments and shipping containers evoke the border crossing vampire who travels in a coffin. Unboxing Nosferatu is part of the anthology ‘I Went to a Party Alone’ in which YouTube vlogs of random daily life are recast as scenes imbued with mythic allusions. When the hard cuts and juxtapositions reveal a landscape of oppressive social control, the vloggers’ mundane normal soon gives way to the surreal. Surveillance helicopters chase astral travellers; child hunters look through scope-cam rifles to aim for the heart; 'unboxing' and 'apartment tour' vlogs conjure containment and borders; a 'drive with me' transforms into sousveillance. Seemingly innocuous recordings about shopping, driving or dating are fraught with foreboding as the vloggers who yearn for freedom, love and self-expression find themselves unable to escape society’s haunting bondage.