If Anything Happens I Love You is an Academy Award-winning 2020 animated short film (12 minutes) directed by Will McCormack and Michael Govier.
A husband and wife sit on opposite ends of a table, eating dinner in silence. While they eat, their shadows argue violently with each other, indicating the true state of their relationship. The reason for their shattered marriage soon becomes apparent: they once had a daughter. The shadow of their daughter rises out of a record player while the shadows of the parents enter a series of flashbacks of their little girl's life. The flashbacks end in a terrible tragedy.
Tropes:
- All There in the Manual: The graphic novel gives the daughter the name Rose.
- Axes at School: The daughter was killed in a school shooting.
- Call-Back: One of the splashes of color in the film is a splash of blue paint on the back wall of the house. A flashback reveals that the daughter kicked a soccer ball which hit the wall, knocking off some of the stucco, and she sloppily painted blue paint over it to cover up the hole.
- Death of a Child: A story of parents who are driven apart by grief, after their 12-year-old daughter is killed in a school shooting.
- Deliberately Monochrome: Most of the short is drawn in black and white to emphasize the mood of grief and sadness.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: The shadows of the parents desperately trying to stop their daughter from going to school. Anyone familiar with the school mass shootings in the US would realize what exactly led to the death of the daughter.
- Flashback: A large portion of the film is a series of flashbacks showing moments in the life of the family, starting with the little girl's birth and including things like a trip to the Grand Canyon and her first kiss during her 10th birthday party, ending with the school shooting.
- The Ghost: The school shooter, who is responsible for the parent's tragedy, is never seen. The only hints to their presence is the sound of gunfire.
- Gray Rain of Depression: It's raining as the parents sit in silence, apart, while the shadow of the little girl watches.
- Limited Animation: There is relatively little movement in the film apart from the shadows, and backgrounds are mostly void space with the minimum detail needed for the story.
- Living Shadow: The shadows are independent of the parents and represent their emotions, showing them screaming at each other while they eat dinner in silence. Then they become more like living memories or ghosts, as the shade of the girl rises up out of the record player and joins the shadows of the parents in the memory flashbacks.
- Our Ghosts Are Different: While the shadows of the parents represent their memories and emotions, the shadow of the girl is more like a ghost. She observes the distance between her parents and literally pushes them together to heal the divide.
- The book follow-up confirms these are their souls, and that they are "disconnected" from them.
- Outliving One's Offspring: The story concerns two parents navigating their grief after losing their daughter to a school shooting.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The nothing is given about the school shooting beyond sounds of gunfire and a last text from the daughter, leaving the rest of the horrifying scenario up to the imagination of the audience.
- Silence Is Golden: No dialogue.
- Sound-Only Death: The school shooting is only depicted via gunfire and screams followed by a chorus of sirens. Combined with the fact the school is never specifically named reminds viewers that this tragedy can happen in any school in the US no matter who the killer is.
- Splash of Color: Most of the film is drawn in shades of gray and black but certain important elements are in color. The color blue is associated with the girl: the blue paint she daubed on the wall, the girl's blue shirt that drives her mother to weeping after finding it in the laundry, a blue balloon and a blue "10" at the girl's last birthday party. The school shooting is not directly shown but is represented by an American flag in color hanging on the wall of the school while gunfire is heard, demonstrating the American problem of endemic gun violence. That point is further driven home when the red and blue of the flag cuts to the red and blue of police cruiser lights.
- Table Space: The opening shot shows the parents glumly eating dinner in silence at opposite ends of a table.
- Title Drop: "If anything happens I love you" is the girl's last text to her parents before she is murdered in the school shooting.
