Visual artist Zandashe Brown takes inspiration from gothic horror and classic maternal thrillers for her new short, Blood Runs Down.

Single mother, Elize, gets her daughter, Ana, ready on the eve of her fifth birthday, and they share a tender moment whilst she plaits her daughters hair. They are clearly close, and they appear to have only each other. When Elize undergoes a terrifying transformation, Ana becomes afraid of her mother, and must decide whether to protect herself at her mother’s expense.

Set in Southern Louisiana, the film has a vintage, gothic feel to it, and the ambiguity of era makes their world seem all the more closed in. The focus is solely on this house, this family, this little girl and her mother. Brown fuses elements of religion, with themes of baptism and water recurring throughout, and also alludes to the idea of inheritance and the way we pass down our demons from one generation to the next.  

The film is shot beautifully, and most of it looks as though it is lit by a dwindling candlelight. This transports us back to the archetypal gothic ghost stories, and makes us feel even more cocooned in their little world. The exquisite costumes add to the ghostly quality of the film, especially effective when Ana dances around holding the beautiful white dress that she wants to wear to her birthday party.

Ana is played perfectly with a touching innocence by Farrah Martin, whose terror and anguish at her mother’s transformation brings a palpable emotion to the story. Idella Johnson plays Elize, and does a wonderful job at portraying a person often engulfed by an overwhelming sense of sadness. She makes the transition from nurturing to menacing in the blink of an eye, and does so in a terrifyingly believable way.  

Blood Runs Down is at once haunting, emotional, and alluring. The mother-daughter relationship is played with such a authentic tenderness, which makes it all the more difficult when Ana is faced with decisions far beyond her years and understanding. The unsettling feeling lingers for a long time after the credits roll… and that’s how you know it’s done it’s job.

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