This scene sits right before the next flashback, and it’s designed to feel like a pause in the girl’s journey while the world around her reshapes itself. It’s the first time the environment starts reacting in a way that openly signals the supernatural rules of the house.
The emotional logic of this room started from the idea of a dining room. Originally, the plan was to include more furniture and a cloth-based transition linking this room directly to the flashback. Time pressure meant a simpler execution, so the space became an impression of a room rather than a fully readable domestic environment. Even though it feels emptier than intended, it still supports the moment by giving the scene enough openness for the transformation to be readable.
The pram was chosen because of its association with infancy and care. When it transforms into the hospital trolley, it becomes a visual anchor linking the moment that’s about to follow in the next flashback. It’s a bridge between domestic imagery and medical trauma, and it arrives without cutting away from the girl. The cat is what triggers the transformation. It jumps in from the previous shot and seamlessly hops into the room. This was a fortunate alignment of separate animations that ended up creating a natural transition. The cat pats the pram, nudges it forward, and the object shifts form mid-roll before crashing into the wall, which triggers the cut to the next scene.
The rug is a late addition. It’s circular by design to represent a fragment of the sigil, specifically the part associated with sight and the repeated theme of eyes. The circle with the dot in the center represents the child with a seed of life inside. It also reads as an eye, which ties directly to the girl’s blindness and her role as the one who eventually breaks the demon’s influence. It’s subtle, but the symbolism isn’t supposed to be obvious on first watch.
Her placement on the right side works narratively and visually. In the flashback she appears as the baby on the right-hand side of the screen, so placing her on the right here opens a subconscious connection between the two scenes. She’s present as a grounding element in the moment, wandering through the space while the flashback imagery and transformations unfold around her.
The pipes around the room are intentionally bright. This room is the one that contains the highest concentration of pipes in the entire short, and since this is where she eventually sets the fire, they needed to be legible. The pipes frame the scene and point toward the doorway she’ll eventually move through. They’re also a visual link to earlier scenes where pipes appear briefly, but this is the first time the viewer actually registers them as an environmental structure.
On the left wall is a painting of Spilliard’s Faun by Moonlight guiding goats. It was meant to be a clearer metaphor for the demon leading and manipulating, but the painterly abstraction and quick pacing mean the details don’t fully register. Even if viewers only absorb its shape subconsciously, it still adds to the stack of references threaded through the film.
The cat remains the unpredictable narrative catalyst. It behaves like a normal cat, but everything it touches pushes the story forward. Its presence here keeps the room feeling alive and prevents the moment from becoming static before the flashback takes over.
There are also two rooms on the left side of this space, and their only real job is to create intrigue. Early in development the structure of the film was just going to be room after room in a simple sequence, but adding branching spaces immediately made the environment feel bigger and more unsettling. You look at those doorways and you wonder what’s behind them. Even if nothing ever comes out of those rooms, the presence of extra spaces implies that the house has depth and history, and it makes this particular room feel more like a real place rather than a corridor with props. It also gives the viewer a moment to project their own imagination into the world, which helps the environment feel alive even though the focus stays on the girl, the pram, and the transformation happening in the center.
Liminal Architecture and Transitional Space Theory
When I designed this room, I was thinking about how liminal spaces operate in horror and visual storytelling. In architectural theory, transitional environments act as psychological buffers between emotional states. This room works exactly that way. It sits between the chaos of the previous sequence and the emotional disruption of the flashback. It needed to feel like the world was holding its breath. Even though I simplified the layout because of time pressure, the emptiness actually ended up supporting the concept: the more ambiguous the space, the more it reads as a suspended moment.
Symbolic Object Transformation
The pram transforming into a hospital trolley draws directly from the idea of symbolic metamorphosis used in dream logic and expressionist cinema. Objects that shift identity without cutting away create a through line between domestic comfort and trauma. That is exactly the emotional arc of the flashback that follows, so having the object change form in front of her gives the viewer a subconscious bridge before the actual flashback appears. The fact that the cat triggers the transformation makes it feel like the world reacts to small disruptions, which is a recurring theme in the film.
Material Metaphors and Circular Imagery
The rug was my first attempt at embedding sigil fragments directly into decor. Circular motifs are historically tied to vision, the self, and the idea of an inner core. The dot in the center reads as an eye, and that symbolism feeds directly into the girl’s blindness and her role as the one character who sees the truth without relying on literal sight. I placed the rug here specifically because this scene sits right before the flashback where her infancy becomes central. It becomes a subtle symbol of the life inside the world and the spiritual seed she carries that destabilises the demon’s influence later.
Character Positioning and Narrative Echoes
Her placement on the right mirrors her position in the flashback as the newborn on the right side of the frame. In film theory, spatial repetition forms associative memory for the viewer, even when they do not consciously make the connection. By keeping her on the same side in both scenes, I created a quiet resonance between the present and the past. She becomes the through line that ties both worlds together while everything around her becomes unstable.
Environmental Visual Hierarchy
The pipes in this room operate almost like architectural veins. I intentionally brightened them because this is the room where fire becomes part of the story later. They needed to be readable, but also overwhelming. In environmental storytelling, when a repeated shape suddenly becomes abundant in one location, it signals narrative escalation. The pipes frame the space and guide the direction of movement toward the doorway she will eventually pass through. This is also the moment where the audience finally registers how connected the plumbing is throughout the house.
Painterly Embedded Symbolism
I placed Spilliard’s Faun by Moonlight guiding goats on the wall because I wanted a mythological reference that spoke to guidance, corruption, and misdirection. Even though the painterly abstraction makes the details hard to recognise, artworks inside a painting-like film create layers of meta symbolism. The faun becomes an echo of the demon. The goats become echoes of the family. Even if viewers do not interpret it consciously, the shape contributes to the unsettling impression that this world has its own history.
The Cat as Narrative Energy
The cat continues functioning as the unpredictable catalyst. In literary and folkloric analysis, animals that behave normally while causing supernatural consequences occupy liminal roles between worlds. That is exactly how the cat works here. Its small physical nudge pushes the pram forward and triggers the transformation. I wanted its presence to feel innocent on the surface but structurally essential underneath. It keeps the beat alive and prevents the room from deadening before the flashback lands.
Spatial Depth and World Expansion
The two extra rooms on the left exist purely to widen the world. Early in development I realised that a linear chain of rooms made the film feel too much like a corridor dream. Adding branching spaces draws from level design theory and architectural horror principles, where the presence of unseen rooms is enough to imply depth, threat, and history. Even if nothing comes out of them, their existence makes the environment feel larger than what the camera shows. It also gives the viewer an imaginative foothold, prompting them to fill the negative space with their own assumptions.