Reset

CW (Content Warning): While our film doesn’t depict abuse or describe it vividly, the subject and emotions of sexual assault are discussed and may be triggering.

RESET centres on naming trauma - the power and pain of that conversation. Our protagonist Kathy and her daughter Allison have a challenging relationship, strained by Kathy’s recent cancer treatment which forced her to move in with Allison and sacrifice her independence. There’s a shifting power dynamic between mother and daughter, with daughter now caring for her mother, and it’s further intensified when Kathy recognizes an older man across the hospital cafe, the man who raped her as a child. Facing this figure, and the possibility of a confrontation, Kathy shares her story with Allison, taking the first steps towards a difficult emotional reset.

Our story focuses on an all too familiar conversation, one between mother and daughter, where the mother is finally willing and able to share something traumatic from their past, something that continues to impact their present, even in the ways they raised their daughter. Notably, our film focuses on the issue of naming something as ‘trauma’ and ‘rape’, especially to someone like Kathy, who belongs to an older generation.

I was drawn to this story because I’ve faced similar conversations with family members, where as a listener, I’ve tackled the same anger as Allison, trying to help them give trauma a name. When #MeToo put a global spotlight on sexual abuse in Hollywood, I saw how the different generations around me grappled with the word ‘rape’, how they began sharing stories and, ultimately, began to use words they had never felt comfortable using but now did because of that spotlight and public conversation.

Lisa Paxton wrote RESET from a similar perspective, not on a specific #MeToo incident, but in the conversations and rhetoric empowered by that movement.

As a filmmaker and a woman, I always try to be conscious of the way a production frames violence, trauma, and horror to ensure my work doesn’t simply perpetuate those things insensitively, instead taking time to consider how we position the camera as a complex storyteller, sometimes a sympathetic eye.

RESET is my first non-horror film, although I believe my experience with horror in previous work has guided my approach to Paxton’s script.

Knowing how relevant and triggering our story is, we took firm precautions at all stages of production, particularly in how we chose to depict Kathy. Our film transitions between different hues of black and white to shades of blue and green, and each marks an important emotional milestone. Rather than returning to a site of trauma, in Kathy’s case a community pool, we instead turn to the colours and lighting of that pool, developing those hues alongside Kathy’s challenging march towards a ‘reset’.

DP Caragh Fitzsimmons and I were particular in these colour and lighting choices, with black and white allowing us to focus on Kathy’s internal fight or flight response as she is overwhelmed by her cancer-free prognosis, which changes as she faces this terrifying figure from her past. We slowly introduce shimmering pool lighting to her face, as though the memory of this event directly shapes her current environment, and that continues as we move into full colour, shifting from tepid blue to sickly green and finally to a freeing blue as Kathy leaves the space.

Our project was proudly created by an entirely woman identifying producing team, along with myself, DP Caragh, and many of our crew. While the word ‘rape’ is consciously never used in our film, which reflects Kathy’s complex journey with acknowledgment and acts of naming, we believe our film facilitates important generational conversations on trauma and abuse of many kinds.