The film begins with a young man sitting in a warm darkness smoking, writing a birthday card, it is left ambiguous as to who the birthday card is being written to, half of the man’s face is in shadow and pensive music is played with a high pitched droning, though it is night you can hear birds chirping in the wind, the flash of a man wearing the mask of a beast sat in the bright lights of a bus plays and then back to the man writing the card.
A slow motion shot of his smart shoes in red light. The music still plays as the man dressed all in black treads through the tube station, he stands on the escalator and nervously shifts, a flash to the man wearing the mask in a phone booth. Back on the escalator the man has his head down as if he were looking at his phone, the music fades and you can hear his footsteps as he leaves the escalator, the end of his going underground.
On the train, you see a bottle that had been cast aside onto the seat, then in red light the reflection of the man staring down at his phone, he does not want to look at himself. We hear the constant moving of the train, some synthetic strings, a strange alien voice and a thumping bass building up.
He approaches the escalator to go up, everything is red and black, we hear train doors closing, out of time percussion, terrifying industrial noises, as he approaches the top of the escalator you can see his hand lightly grip the railing and then let go. He leaves the station.
The noise fades and we see some shots of the outdoors, all seems normal. A guitar melody is tense to begin with but then becomes melodic, the man smokes and walks through central London to the steps of saint paul’s and takes a seat on the stairs, we look over his shoulder.
We look over the shoulder of the man wearing the mask on the bus, the mask is now facing backwards, concealing him, the guitar fades away and we cut to the man wearing the mask walking through central London and crossing a bridge, he sits and stares at the city and then runs away.
We cut to a wide shot of a village seen through the shrubbery and then to an old abandoned quarry, a candle blows out, the blades of grass sway in the wind, all in black and white. A guitar part plays and fades out to complete silence and the grass still sways.
The film is about a young man who struggles with the social norms, the pressure of living in a city and mental health issues, he undergoes a psychological transformation on public transport and decides to wear a mask, however this still doesn’t help him cope, he runs away. The candle going out is a symbol of the death of this part of his personality, at peace within nature.