American director Michael Dougherty is best known for helming the cult horror hits Trick ‘r Treat and Krampus, as well as the recent goofy kaiju movie Godzilla: King Of Monsters. Beyond that, he’s also written the scripts for X-Men sequel X2 and Superman Returns.
Beyond even that, though, the guy’s got some serious skill with plucking out salient movie quotes and scenes, as evidenced by the terrific supercut he’s put together during this period of coronavirus and self-isolation about…coronavirus and self-isolation.
Posted to Dougherty’s personal Youtube page and ironically soundtracked by Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive, the video essay features clever clip selections from just about every relevant sci-fi, horror, and action blockbuster, all coagulating into one big ‘how to’. Scenes from Alien, The Terminator, and The Thing are used to narrativise the growth of the virus, from our most early understanding of it, to the spread of misinformation, to the final messages of hope (or hopelessness) that viewers might be feeling right now.
The supercut is also pretty political, with a short montage of clips showing the public being encouraged to inject themselves with sanitizer by ‘the President’, a jab at real US news that is buttressed by scenes from Jaws of the greedy mayor insisting that the beaches stay open despite the threat of shark attacks.
Despite all the face-melting and explosions in the video, however, you might ultimately find it kind of inspiring; seeing characters like Ellen Ripley and Will Smith in I Am Legend go through some of the same self-isolation as us normies is a bit gratifying. If they can get through their own blockbuster pandemics and global disasters, maybe we can get through this one.
