The Imploding Self: A Journey Through the Life of Fergus McLafferty

A short New Zealand film included on the Dark Stories DVD. It can also be watched online on a New Zealand Microsoft Network (MSN) site. It's not particularly a horror film, more of a bizarre fantasy film.

The colors in the movie seem to have been carefully chosen, and the film stock or the way the film was developed gives it a bright, unreal look. There is some upbeat, funny instrumental music in the score that complements it well.

Young Fergus has a vision of a mermaid-angel-cherub in the sky. He is given money by his uncle with whom he lives to get a pet for himself. He wants something with legs but hairless due to his aunt's allergies. The pet store owner directs him to the dogfish, a weird (but real!) fish with legs.

He becomes fairly obsessed with the dogfish, reading about it, telling people all about it. When he looks at his own reflection, he imagines that he sees the same sort of plant-like mane on his head that the dogfish has. He likes to go swimming, and meets a young woman (a cousin of some kind) whom he marries. He imagines she's pregnant with a dogfish, and cancels their honeymoon when he learns on TV that people eat dogfish where they were scheduled to go. She leaves with their baby, and he is left with the dogfish and increasingly becomes obsessed with it.

I suspect this is a very loose adaptation of or riff on Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar's short story Axolotl. It would be fairly incredible if the director of this film hadn't ever read it. In that, a man is obsessed with a dogfish (AKA an Axolotl, as it is also called in the film). He begins to imagine he is a dogfish imagining he is a man, and that the dogfish is a man imagining he is a dogfish... or something like that. It's quite strange. Cortazar also wrote the short story on which the films Blow-up and Blow Out were based, and it is pretty strange too. An interesting writer, but difficult to read, at least in the English translation in which I read him.

"The Imploding Self: A Journey through the life of Fergus McLafferty" is found on a New Zealand anthology of short films including "Eau de la Vie", "Bitch", "La Vie en Rose","Headlong","Sure to Rise", and "Warm Gun". called Dark Stories: Tales from Beyond the Grave. It's a visually intriguing short film with interesting shots of fish, a birthday party, synchronized swimming, a monkey in a cage, mexicans cooking fish, and Fergus on his deathbed wanting to be a merman. It stars with Fergus as a young child of 11 or 12, who lives with his uncle and overbearing aunt. Then it cuts to 25 years or so later with Fergus cutting himself while shaving. He meets one of the swimmers and falls in love with her. Fergus is obsessed with Fish. They have a child, and she eventually leaves because loves the fish more than her. He communicates with the fish and wears scales. He eventually morphs into a fish and it abruptly ends. Theres some meaning or point to this film, but i think multiple viewings would help bring it out more. I'm not really for sure what the point is. However it was amusing. Rating: 5 of 10