Short Film

Abandon All Hope

Paige Yarnall

North Branford, CT

Advisor: Justin Liberman

Artist Bio

Paige Yarnall is a writer and filmmaker located in the New York Metropolitan Area. She is currently a student at the University of Connecticut pursuing a B.F.A. in Film & Video Production.

Yarnall knew her future was in storytelling from a young age when she would craft intricate plots and characters with her action figures. As the years went on, the storylines were no longer acted out with toys, but instead in her mind. Barely a day would go by where she wasn’t mentally working on a story, now with the longing to have them exist on a screen. Heavily inspired by music, her work focuses on character-driven stories in satirical and psychological genres. Her post-graduation plans are to venture into the Pre-Production and Production side of the industry, focusing on screenwriting. Through this path, her goal is to bring her stories to life and evoke strong emotions in audiences.

Artist Statement

Abandon All Hope is a psychological melodrama exploring the dark side of faith. The core of the story revolves around the loneliness of mental illness that births both delusion and codependency. Cameron “Cam” Eason is imprisoned in an isolation of his own making. When the fallen angel reveals himself to Cam, they conclude that he is one of the individuals fated to act in preordained events to solidify God’s sovereignty. Cam is seemingly stuck in the middle of a battle for his soul between two former brothers, one still loyal to God. His mind mirrors this battle, the guilt of his religious upbringing clashing with his hatred for the Creator, the one who made his volatile mind. This story acts as a glimpse into religious psychosis and the hallucinations involving religious figures and divine missions.

I took inspiration for the title from Dante’s Inferno, where the Gates of Hell declare, “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” By the end of the film, the hope that Cam briefly had is gone, realizing his life is his own version of hell. He finds salvation in the character Lucifer, whose story I have always been fascinated by. Cam relates to his villainization, seeing him as the only one who could possibly understand his mind. Throughout the film it becomes apparent that Cam is an unreliable narrator, his grip on reality dwindling as he withdraws from social life. His complete belief in the information presented to him paired with his response to religious guilt triggers his tragic downfall.