Fungus

Director's Statement

I directed “Fungus” as an attempt to capture a generalized anxiety that a lot of us feel about the decisions we postpone in our lives, or the problems we allow to grow and overwhelm us because taking action against them is intimidating in some way. It takes the form of a parable - being a short, symbolic story (often involving the supernatural) that is intended to convey a moral message. A big influence for me was Guillermo Del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth”. Like Del Toro’s film, “Fungus” aims to weave together the genres of fairy-tale and horror (which I think is a very natural pairing) so as to comment on something real and pertinent to our modern lives. A clear example of the anxiety I’m talking about is anxiety about the impending consequences of climate change. We all feel it. So, the imagery in “Fungus” is very environmental. The giant that hunts the father and son is a kind of debt collector for Nature, and the creature in the tree could be thought of as Nature itself. The father has procrastinated on repaying his debts for too long, and the inevitable consequences grow and spread (like a fungus). Ultimately his son too, must pay the price.