Saturday Shorts: Wood Man
Sometimes, the best type of horror is the one that makes you look at what’s around and wonder, “What if…?” I know that’s how my wild imagination works: take something completely ordinary, throw a slight kink into it, and let it fester. And how much more ordinary can we get than those little wooden figures that artists use? Bearing that in mind, here’s another rather short entry: Isaac Rodriguez’s Wood Man.
This one isn’t gory. This one has no dialogue. Yet this one works for me based on the headiness of the concept: what if objects were tired of being subjects? What if their natural, inanimate state to us was akin to being tortured? What if the perspectives were changed and we found ourselves at the hands of that which we manipulate? And there, kids, is a fear that has been rearing its head since the dawn of time – whether politically, sexually, or in the struggle against nature, we’re afraid that something we’ve had power over will overpower us in turn, and that it will be violent and bloody.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go apologize to the small vase of flowers on my table. Happy Saturday.
