Shock Therapy
2017, 36 minutes
One woman's descent into a deep depression reaches a violent and shocking climax.
Anastasia is spiralling further and further into a deep depression. She has genuine problems in her life, both at work and in her personal life but she is unsure whether the depression has arisen from these problems or that her problems have arisen because of her depression. She is lost in the nightmarish haze of a downward cycle where cause leads to effect leads to cause. Her work is suffering, she is alienated from her colleagues and she is suffering sexual harassment from her boss. At home, her fiancé has run off with another woman and she seems to have alienated all of her friends. In her increasingly confused mind she is unsure whether her friends have abandoned her because of her state of mind or whether it was her that pushed them away. The only person left who still seems to acknowledge her is the drug dealer who lives in the next door flat. As Anastasia spirals further into a kind of hallucinogenic mental hell, reality and fantasy become increasingly blurred. She is abruptly brought out of her own mind when two armed gangsters burst into her flat. It turns out that they are after the drug dealer next door but they have got the wrong flat. As they threaten Anastasia, the dealer next door overhears the commotion and comes into confront the two gangsters. In the resulting chaos, one of the gangsters and the drug dealer get shot dead. Anastasia then picks up the gun from the dead gangster and shoots dead the second gangster. Next day she enters her office a transformed woman and goes to confront her boss. The intensity of the experience appears to yanked her back into the real world and given her a new fatalistic self confidence. Or she has fantasised the whole thing as she disappears further down the rabbit hole of delusion.
