I challenge you to creep yourself out this Halloween by re-visiting your childhood home using the 2010 interactive short film “The Wilderness Downtown.”
The short film by Chris Milk is a Google Chrome experiment created with the help of Google Maps and a song long enough to navigate through the streets of the neighborhood you grew up in.
Just type in the address of your childhood home and grab a bowl of popcorn, because things are about to get grade-A stalker-ish.
“The Wilderness Downtown” begins with a faceless man wearing a hooded sweater as he runs through the streets. As the video progresses, Google Maps is figuring where the neighborhood that corresponds with the address is located.
Pop-up windows show a birds eye view of your childhood vicinity before zooming in to reveal the front lawn of your old abode.
The interactive video also allows you to write a letter to your childhood self. Of course, you won’t actually receive it, because you would have remembered getting a letter from your older self if that were the case.
The film lasts for about five minutes, and it’s soundtrack happens to be the Arcade Fire song “We Used to Wait.”
“We Used to Wait” features a beautiful piano melody that keeps the songs medium tempo. I especially love the bridge where the line “we used t wait for it” is repeated several times before the song comes to an end.
This is one of the most impressive interactive videos I’ve seen to date.
Give it a try for yourself here.
