Like What's In the Box?, today's video is based on a video game, and like World Builder, it's about a man who doesn't know how to show his deep devotion for another. Although the premise isn't all that different from the Twilight Zone episode "Elegy", Unloved exchanges humor and wonder for the morbid and macabre:
Many of the summer shorts featured here this week feature either little to no dialogue, or a heavy emphasis on special effects (or both). In contrast, Unloved is all about mood, atmosphere, and characterization. It subtly prepares us for something, even if we don't know what, as we are disturbed by what we don't see before we are by what we see. It's exactly what I found most engaging in the game it is inspired by, Eternal Darkness. None of the characters or situations in Unloved are lifted from that material, but both media feature similar themes of rational people driven to insanity, and yet whose actions remain perfectly justifiable within their own broken minds.
Both movie and source eloquently fit the game's subtitle: Sanity's Requiem.
Creepy … as I supposed it was intended to be.