Haunting

Haunting, 2020; 32 min; two-channel 2K HD video; color and black and white; in English, Japanese, and Italian.

A film by John Menick

2020; 32 min; two-channel 2K HD video; color and black and white; in English, Japanese, and Italian.

Haunting is a two-channel film assembling footage from several decades of supernatural domestic horror films. These are films in which domestic and residential spaces—suburban houses, decaying mansions, off-season hotels—are haunted by the spectral or the paranormal. Drawing on horror’s highly organized genre conventions, Haunting creates an imaginary architecture in which the repressed always returns and the past is never dead. The film’s protagonists—often played by actors now forgotten—appear not unlike ghosts themselves, their wanderings twinned across the film’s two screens in a strange, apparitional choreography. Haunting is a study in the spectral, as it is a response to the ghostly world that emerged from the pandemic—a world that became, for many, both uncanny and terrifying.

Premiering at Lo schermo dell’arte, 13ª edizione, Florence, 2020.

Editing and Sound Design
John Menick

Sound Mixing
Andy Cooke

John Menick | Art | Writing | About | Newsletter | Instagram