Halloween music video countdown 2019: Massive Attack

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      Often, the things that stay with us the longest are not the jump scares or bursts of gore found in many horror flicks. The truly haunting images are the ones that are subtly but profoundly disturbing.

      That must have been Ed Morris's thinking when he shot the video for the Massive Attack song "Come Near Me". In it, a man (Jonathan Aris) walks toward a woman (Arta Dobroshi), who walks away from him, stepping backwards. And that's pretty much it, for six minutes. We never learn the exact nature of their relationship, nor do the actors' facial expressions give us any real clue as to what is happening between them. The effect is deeply unsettling.

      In a 2016 interview, Morris said of the video:

      The idea, everything I considered came from the track. The notion of an emotional stand off, an impasse, came about quite early. I explored that visually. When you are going through something tough emotionally the world around you can seem so surreal. So pointless. The world we portray around them is a very normal one, almost painfully normal. It’s a complete contrast to their madness.

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