Where the hell has video director Chris Cunningham been? In 2003, he was one of the three prestigious video filmmakers who led the inaugural launch of the Director’s Label DVD series. The other two directors, Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry, obviously had nascent film careers already starting to take off, and essentially became household names (relatively speaking of course) instead of just buzzed-about names for hipsters, indie-film-fans in the know. And so everyone basically expected Cunningham to follow suit and tear up the film world.
He did as much in the video world creating grotesquely abstract, disturbing and hauntingly moody images for artists like Madonna (“Frozen“), Portishead (“Only You“), Aphex Twin (“Windowlicker,” “Come To Daddy“), Squarepusher (“Come On My Selector”), Björk (the lesbian robots of “All Is Full of Love“) and Autechre (“Second Bad Vilbel“). In the music video world, he was as cutting edge as shaving razor, but instead of following the expected route into the feature film world, he kind of vanished. Or at least didn’t work that much in the mainstream, only putting together a few music videos here and there (most recently for The Horrors) and creating ambitious art installations and in 2006, a six-minute short film called, “Rubber Johnny” which started out as a 30-second TV commercial for Aphex Twin’s 2001 record Drukqs, but he enjoyed the concept so much, he expanded it into a short film.
Great, but still no feature. Well, in a recent interview with Vice, the reclusive-ish director said (when not discussing the vagaries of modern pornography) he’s not only working on a couple of feature films that he has to finish first (presumably he means the scripts?), he’s working on one in the genre most people expected him to land in: the fucked-up horror genre (as in, his sure-to-be mindbendingly creepy final product will likely not be traditional horror if his twisted video work is any indication).
“I think I’ve got to get a couple of feature films finished first. There’s one I’m working on now that you could loosely describe as a horror. Actually talking about this reminds me of that scene in “American Werewolf in London” when he changes into the werewolf in the front room. That really shocked me. I think it was because it was shot in a brightly lit, stark front room and he’s naked and although there’s something really shocking happening in it there’s a sexual element to it.”
If anyone can breathe new life into the mostly-stale horror genre, it’s likely Chris Cunningham who can do it and we nominate him to be the its savior. Hell, since Aphex Twin is busy being a hermit and Squarepusher is stuck in a jazz-y repeat cycle he needs to break, how amazing would it be if these two scored his film? Yeah, just the thought gives us wood too. Here’s some of Cunningham’s work, the 11-minute “Windowlicker” video is hilarious and incredibly fucked-up. The 7-minute “Come On My Selector” for Squarepusher is an atmospheric creepfest too.
Watch: Aphex Twin – “Windowlicker”
Watch: Squarepusher – “Come On My Selector”