A Prayer for My Father: Short Horror Film on Shared Trauma

Unspeakable Discovery

• 🎃 The story begins on Halloween 1978, when a father and his young daughter, Lola, discover something terrible in the woods.
• 🧠 This event profoundly changes the father, making Lola wonder about his true character before that day.
• 😭 The father is noted to have cried only twice in his life: at Lola's birth and upon the death of his Uncle Walt.

Echoes of the Past

• 📦 Decades later, Lola receives a package containing her father's ashes and Uncle Walt's old baseball cap, a family heirloom.
• ⚠️ Her Aunt Dasha warns Lola not to "go up there," implying a return to the place of the original trauma, and mentions their collective efforts to help her father.
• ⚾ The baseball cap, seen in an old photo with her young parents, becomes a symbol of the past and the family's hidden pain.

Confronting the Trauma

• 🌲 Lola ultimately returns to the woods, seemingly to confront the source of her family's long-standing trauma.
• 👻 The film visually depicts her encountering a supernatural presence or manifestation of the past horror.
• 💔 Lola reflects on pain, stating she doesn't know where it goes after death, but resolves to make it "stop with me" out of love for her grandmother, suggesting a desire to break a cycle of suffering.