It is no secret that human-caused pollution is damaging the ocean.  Scenes like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch remind us that our trash, which we may use only once, can last for many years and cause severe damage to marine ecosystems.  The image below is of the patch, a shocking example of the extent to which our species has harmed the ocean through our overconsumption and use of nonrenewable resources.  From the effects of pollution such as this and the phenomenon of climate change, many species are under threat of extinction. 

The short film Hybrids gives us an alternative response of nature to our polluting ways, although it is no less horrifying.  Instead of going extinct, Hybrids describes a world where sea creatures have fused with the trash we have thrown in the ocean.  This film begins with a grouper with the body of an oil barrel, which is promptly eaten by a shark with the face of a car.  The dead grouper is eaten by crabs fused with bottle caps, which are eaten by a turtle with a shell that looks like a barbecue grill.  This turtle is found and hunted by the shark, but the shark is killed by a massive squid.  The grill turtle escapes to the shore, where it is found by a bird of prey made out of a tire, showing us that not even the surface animals were able to escape the evolution into hybrids.  The different interactions between these creatures, whether predator-prey or detritovore, reveal to us that natural processes are still intact.  However, from the landscape of trash in these scenes to the hybrids themselves, we can clearly see that in spite of the natural relationships shown in this film, nothing is as it should be, and it is the fault of humanity.  In the film, humans are shown to ultimately be unable to truly conquer nature, all we have done is make it more terrifying than ever before.  Hybrids include themes common to many of the other ocean ecohorror texts, most prominently fear of the unknown and man’s relationship to nature.  By playing on these fears, this short film acts as both effective ecohorror and delivers a powerful message.

Theme: Fear of the Unknown

 This short film forces us to imagine the processes occurring beneath the surface of the ocean as our trash piles up and the ocean slowly becomes less inhabitable for life.  Not much is known right now about what a future with climate change will look like, Hybrids attempts to answer that question with jarring body horror and powerful music and audio that mimics a true horror movie.  What makes this film interesting is that there are no humans shown in the entire film, but we can clearly see the disaster they have caused.  However, that is one of the few things clearly made known in this film.  We are left with questions of humanity's relationship to these hybrids, and whether or not this is a future we could be headed for.  We know so little of the ocean that the evolutions shown in this film could be happening right now and we might never know. Hybrids connects two things we do know: we are polluting the ocean to dangerous levels, and that nature is capable of evolving in response to environmental pressures. It then combines them into a shocking scenario that we know is unrealistic, but we are still unable to say it is impossible because we know just so little about the world of the ocean.   Because the future remains so in doubt, this film doesn’t seem as unrealistic as it should be, and this creates effective fear in viewers' minds as they view a possibility for the world they are creating.  This exaggerated world of trash taps into viewers anxieties about the future by showing something beyond their worst fears, by also playing on their fear of the unknown by setting these scenes in the ocean and not where humans actually tend to live, the surface.  This creates effective ecohorror that both scares the readers and leaves them with many questions about the role humans had in making the scenes in Hybrids happen, and how humanity can face the future when warned of these terrifying possibilities. 

Theme: Man’s relationship to nature

In Hybrids, themes and processes of nature are a constant presence: we see the death of the barrel grouper at the hands of the shark, then the shark is itself eaten by the giant squid, and the grouper is eaten by bottle cap crabs.  Left out of these grisly scenes is humanity. 

Viewers are forced to confront possibilities in this film that in the end, nature outlasted our species, being able to adapt where we couldn’t, or even that nature used these hybrid creatures to wreak vengeance on the species who destroyed their home, which is something found very often in other ecohorror texts. By not showing a human face viewers can connect too, the focus shifts to the world humans have created.  Viewers face questions of the future we have chosen to create for our world, and what our species’ relationship to this future will be. Like many other ecohorror texts, we can find that ultimately man was unable to conquer nature, it lives on in spite of the worst we did to it.  In this new world, nature’s relationships remain the same, such as predator-prey and detritivore.  What we do not know is the relationship of man to this new nature, and this creates fear and unease in the viewer as the fate of our species remains unknown.  This helps effectively convey the point that not only are we destroying the world around us through our pollution, but we might also be destroying ourselves.  Through this and the other themes present in this story, Hybrids leaves a powerful message without using a single word, letting the images speak for themselves.