Rhest for the Wicked Short Film Update #10

A characteristic of Rhest for the Wicked and several of the short stories (as well as subsequent books in the continuity) is that of the unknown.  Rhest’s world was inspired by Robert Howard and similar writers from the dawn of the 20th Century.  Howard – famous for Conan among many other stories – created a very rough outline for his world but never felt beholden to it.

Rhest comes from that thinking.  Much of modern fiction today is replete with stories that are tangible, they are so realistic.  Even far-out stories of sci-fi and fantasy often have deeply developed and highly plausible systems.

That is truly masterful and inspired storytelling, but it isn’t universally necessary.  Sometimes, it’s even problematic.  I don’t care for Rhest’s stories to ever explain what a ghost is (or isn’t).  I don’t want the existence of zombies to be explained in physiologically-plausible detail.

The world needs more mystery.

As such, Rhest’s stories are often devoid of a few lines here and there that might explain the hows and whys.  That’s deliberate.  Rhest inhabits a world he doesn’t fully understand because nobody fully understands their world.  Much of what we see and interact with, we take on trust.  We focus less on the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ and worry more about the ‘what’s next’.

It’s that spirit I want to help bring back in small fashion to movies and television.  It’s that spirit, that commitment to internally-consistent-yet-narratively-ambiguous storytelling, that this film is meant to promote.

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