Methuselah is a unique, and extremely odd, horror-tinged short. Stylized as a slideshow presentation instead of a moving picture, filmmaker Nathan Sellers parades creepy archival photography overlaid with a tame narration that rambles more like a neighborly exhibition than that of a campfire ghost story. This pseudo-documentary is simple and straightforward yet also a weirdly haunting show.

 

Narrated by Jordan Mullins, Methuselah shows saturated video of a tree overlain with grisly, monochromatic images of an electric chair and a gallows. A branch used for lynching. Wooden implements of torture and death. These are all intermixed with that stately old tree. 

 

Sellers, of course, is equating mankind’s quest for afflicting torment using the most natural means possible. Methuselah even comes with the sub-title “A brief history of trees and the dialectic of human violence.” And he succeeds.

 

Yet as interesting and unique a piece as Methuselah is, the slideshow approach is more visually jarring than disturbing. More thoughtful than terrorizing. Yet altogether memorable.